


at last, and too soon

by Chrome



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Aromantic Asexual Caduceus Clay, Caduceus Clay & Yasha Friendship, Canon Asexual Character, F/F, Frigid Woe (Explorer's Guide to Wildemount), Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Matter of Life and Death, Mighty Nein as Family, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Oblivious Fjord (Critical Role), Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:55:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26730988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrome/pseuds/Chrome
Summary: A city built to fight the gods, even buried beneath the snow, is still a danger to their servants. When one of the hidden dangers of Eiselcross makes itself known almost too late, Mighty Nein race against the clock to find the cure--or come to terms with the loss of one of their own.---“Only a matter of life or death,” Beau said.“Isn’t everything?”
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Caduceus Clay & Beauregard Lionett, Caduceus Clay & Nott | Veth Brenatto & Yasha, Caduceus Clay & Yasha, Caduceus Clay/Fjord, Fjord & Beauregard Lionett, Fjord & Jester Lavorre & Beauregard Lionett & Caleb Widogast
Comments: 186
Kudos: 254





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If any of you thought for a single second that I was not going to take full advantage of Matthew Mercer giving us an Incurable By Normal Means Disease, you were very mistaken.
> 
> Thanks to Jelly for the beta read and Star and the Fjorclay server for egging me on, per usual.
> 
> Spoilers through episode 109, R. Canon compliant through episode 111, after which I make no promises. Additional spoilers for some very specific details in the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount.
> 
> Edit 12/28/2020: Tags updated to reflect how Very Not Canon Compliant this fic has become, whoops.

_I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. /_ _I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down / into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, / how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, / which is what I have been doing all day._

_Tell me, what else should I have done? / Doesn’t everything die **at last, and too soon**? /Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?_

_-"_ The Summer Day", Mary Oliver

\---

For a location well-advertised as a highly magical death trap, the Mighty Nein came out of Eiselcross almost entirely unscathed. They all had a couple new scars, and Fjord had bruises on his ass from an unplanned slide down a particularly icy tunnel that he’d been unwilling to ask the clerics to take care of, and Caduceus had a lingering cold, but he’d thought that was the worst of it. He went on thinking that until almost a week after they’d returned, when Caduceus fainted in the kitchen of the house in Rosohna.

Jester shrieked. Fjord lunged to catch him and did so clumsily; his knees hit the ground hard but he managed to stop Caduceus’s head from hitting the tile. Then the rest of the Nein was there, crowded around in a probably ill-advised way, and Caduceus blinked back to awareness about fifteen seconds later with all of his friends leaning over him.

“Heyyy,” Jester said. “You fainted.”

“Oh,” Caduceus blinked. “Huh.”

“Have you been feeling alright?” Caleb asked.

“A little under the weather,” Caduceus said. “I thought it was a cold.” He was pale beneath the gray fur, and shivering.

“Since when?” Veth asked.

“Since Eiselcross,” Caleb said. “Right?”

“That long?” Beau demanded. “Why didn’t you heal yourself?”

Fjord wondered the same thing. Caduceus had gotten sick in Eiselcross—“I think it’s just the cold getting to me,” he had told them, on the morning he was shivering even in the dome where the interior was temperate, and they’d just spent the whole night. That should have been the moment he realized it, but Fjord had shrugged it off. When Caduceus had been tired and achy later, he’d used Lay on Hands to cure him of illness. And when Caduceus had been just as stiff and pale the next morning, he’d written it off as the cold.

Now, he was worried. Beau looked worried too, and her frown deepened when Caduceus said, “I tried that.”

“It didn’t work?”

He shook his head. “Not really.”

“How do you feel?” she asked. Caduceus sat up gingerly; Fjord was instantly hyperaware that his head had been in his lap and was belatedly embarrassed, even though Caduceus just patted his leg in thanks as he slowly righted himself.

“A little dizzy,” he said. “Tired. Cold.”

“Let me try again,” Jester said.

Beau leaned in to look at him as Jester began to invoke the Traveler behind her. “Oh, shit.”

“What?” Fjord asked.

“That’s it,” Jester cut in. “Do you feel any better, Caduceus?”

He hesitated. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so.” He shivered again.

“Are you cold?” Yasha asked. “I’ll get a blanket.”

“That’s so weird,” Jester said. “Is it a curse? Have you been cursed?”

“Not that I remember,” he said.

“Check out his veins,” Beau interrupted. She had leaned in so close to Caduceus’s face that it might have been awkward with anyone else, but he seemed unphased. Jester didn’t seem to realize this and leaned right in, too.

“I don’t see—oh, weird,” she said. “They’re all blue.”

“They’re what?” Fjord couldn’t help but lean in to look. Sure enough, the blue tinge to his veins was more visible on his face where the fur was short and fine.

“Here.” Yasha was back with a heavy comforter and she began to wind Caduceus in it. He let her.

“Let me...” Fjord reached for Caduceus’s hand and tried to cure disease again. It still felt a little odd, like pouring a warm light from his hand that never felt quite like his. Caduceus smiled at him. “Thank you.”

“Did it help?” Fjord asked.

“I don’t think so,” Caduceus said. “But I appreciate the care.”

“And you’ve just been sick for like a week?” Jester demanded. “That’s awful, why didn’t you tell us?”

“I thought it would go away,” he said. “And then my spells didn’t work and I wasn’t sure. I thought it might get better.”

“And then you fainted,” Caleb added, helpfully.

“Holy shit,” Beau said. “Next time you have to say, I’m sick! Just be like ‘hey, I feel like shit,’ Deucey! Say ‘I think I have a disease incurable by magic.’ Fuck!”

“At the time,” Caduceus said, with as much dignity as could be managed when he was shivering violently and burrito-wrapped in a blanket so thoroughly that he was struggling to extract an arm, “I thought that was an overreaction.”

“Do we think this is from Eiselcross?” Jester asked.

“We could ask DeRogna,” Beau said.

Caleb nodded. “It is possible she has seen this before. And we can do our own research.”

“We’ll make sure you get better,” Jester assured Caduceus.

“Thank you,” he said. “I appreciate that.” Fjord was comforted by the fact that he didn’t look worried—now that Fjord was checking, he looked tired and pale, but not worried.

“Who is going to see DeRogna?” Caleb asked. “I think it might be best if Fjord goes. He is the best—negotiator, you would say.”

“I’m going,” Beau crossed her arms.

“I want to go too,” Jester said.

“That’s probably enough,” Caduceus said. “Kind of a lot for a sudden visit.”

“Then I will go to the library,” Caleb agreed. “Veth, will you come with me? I can teleport us all to Rexxentrum and we can meet again afterwards.”

“Sure,” she said. “Yasha, Caduceus?”

“I think Caduceus should get some rest,” Caleb said.

“I’ll stay with him,” Yasha volunteered.

“We will be back very soon,” Caleb promised.

He sketched the circle into the dirt in the rooftop garden. They teleported into the Archive in Rexxentrum—no one seemed terribly surprised that Beau had failed to call ahead, and she quickly got Caleb and Veth settled.

Then Fjord, Beau, and Jester walked towards DeRogna’s house in the Candles. “Who’s going to take the lead in there?” Fjord asked.

“Kinda thought you would, Captain,” said Beau.

“I can take over if things are going poorly,” he said. “But you are the Expositor of the Cobalt Soul. She might take you more seriously than the rest of us sellswords.”

“We’re the Mighty Nein,” Jester said, frowning.

“No, alright,” Beau said. “But you’ve got to back me up.”

“Of course,” he said. They were still in their Xhorhasian clothes, Fjord realized, when they were getting odd looks. Nothing to be done about it now. Jester didn’t seem to notice. Beau seemed to revel in it.

Luckily, Vess’s house was familiar. They went up to the door and knocked. A servant answered, and Beau lifted her chin. “Beauregard Lionnett, Expositor with the Cobalt Soul. These are my associates, Fjord and Jester, with the Mighty Nein. We’re here to see Vess.”

“Uhh,” the doorman wavered. “Do you have an appointment?” His expression suggested that he didn’t think so, but was too nervous to say it outright.

“She’ll want to see us,” Fjord put in, with false confidence. It was enough—or maybe his tusks were enough, or Beau’s glare—to send him skittering off to get his mistress.

She was frowning when she came, but waved them into the parlor. They ended up all standing around awkwardly, because she didn’t offer them a seat.

“I did not expect you to be back so soon,” she said. “It is considered polite to make an appointment.”

“Kinda in a rush,” Beau said. “You know of any sickness that can’t be healed with magic?”

“Yes,” she said.

“That you could get up North,” Fjord put in.

“Caduceus is sick,” Jester jumped into an explanation, “And I tried to heal him and Fjord tried to heal him and he tried to heal himself and none of it worked, which is super weird, and he’s really cold, and his veins are kind of blueish which is pre-tty freaky. And we were thinking, you know Vess, she knows about all this weird stuff that happens in Eiselcross so we though, maybe she can tell us what’s happening to Caduceus!”

“Well,” Vess said, after a pause to absorb Jester’s words. “That sounds like something called the Frigid Woe.”

“That doesn’t sound great,” Fjord offered.

“It was a disease created to slow down potential entrants. The sufferer has fatigue, chills, and the blue veins you mentioned. It progresses slowly, but if it is not cured, the sufferer will die and their body will turn to ice.”

“Well, shit,” said Beau.

“And what is the cure?” Fjord said. “As Jester mentioned, our spells don’t seem to be helping him.”

“The antidote was manufactured by Aeor’s mages,” she said. “It can be found in Aeor.”

“I don’t suppose there happens to be any that’s been picked up,” he said. “For situations like this—we would be happy to reimburse the assembly, of course.”

“No,” she said. “We don’t have any on hand.”

“Then we can go back!” Jester said. “It progresses slowly, you said, so we can go and pick some up no problem.”

“A somewhat risky trip,” she said. “But I wish you well.”

“You won’t be coming with us?” Fjord asked. “We would...certainly appreciate your assistance. And of course would retrieve or look for anything else you might wish to find.”

“In another few months,” she said carelessly, “An expedition might be to my benefit. But no, I have no wish to return now.”

“But you said,” Jester was staring at her. “You said he would die and turn into a block of ice.”

“Which is unfortunate,” she said. “And I wish you all luck.”

“We were there to help you!”

“And were well compensated for your efforts. And aware of the risk,” she said coldly.

“You didn’t exactly mention the incurable disease that freezes you into an ice sculpture,” Fjord pointed out. “We might have been looking for some antidote just in case if you had.”

“You knew,” Beau said, suddenly.

“Pardon?”

“You knew Caduceus was sick,” she said. “He mentioned it a couple times. We all just thought it was the cold but—you knew about this. You knew what it was.”

“I knew it was a possibility,” she said.

Beau’s hands were balled into fists. It was clear, looking at her, that it was taking every scrap of her self-control to keep from launching herself at the wizard.

But it wasn’t Beau who moved next.

“You—you monster,” Jester cried, and lunged forward at Vess Derogna, Archmage of Antiquities of the Cerberus Assembly, and punched her in the face.

The bad news was that Vess Derogna could have killed them all on the spot. The good news was that she looked too stunned to try it. Her nose was crooked, and blood dripped from her split lip.

“Right,” Fjord said. “That’s settled, then. Goodbye.” He grabbed Jester by the collar. Beau looked stunned, but she had the sense to book it down the hall as well. They passed the alarmed-looking doorman, shoved past, and spilled out onto the street.

“Holy shit,” Beau said. “You just—Jester!”

“She deserved it!” Jester was crying, but she was also clearly spitting mad. “She didn’t care. Caduceus could die!”

“He won’t,” Beau said.

“Come on,” Fjord said, leading them in a speedwalk past the Candles and the Solstryce Academy, trying to get some distance.

“They don’t have any of the cure,” Jester said.

“We’re going back,” Beau said, like it was a foregone conclusion—which, Fjord realized only a second later, it was. “We’ll get some.”

“Okay,” Jester said. “We’ll find it.”

“We don’t need her,” Fjord said, despite his unease.

“Right,” Jester said, smiling through the last of her tears of rage.

They reached the Archive in record time. “Come on,” Beau said, striding back in, scanning the desks for Veth and Caleb. They were huddled over a book together, Caleb making notes. “Let’s go.” They looked up at the same time. “We know what it is. Let’s go.”

“What is it?” Caleb packed up his things with as much haste as his typical care allowed. Veth shoved her stuff haphazardly into her bag in a configuration only she understood, but that seemed to fit everything perfectly.

“Frigid Woe, which is some shit that Aeor’s mages came up with. Incurable by normal means. There’s a cure.”

“And you have it?”

“No,” Beau said. “It’s in Aeor. Only way to get it.”

“Are we returning?” Caleb caught on quickly.

“Yep,” Jester said.

“Without the aid of Vess,” Fjord put in. “She was not—interested.”

Caleb frowned deeply. He had started to cast Teleport, motioning them all close.

“Jester hit her,” Beau said, timing it just before the spell went off and Caleb’s eyes widened and then they were all in the living room at the Xhorhouse.

“Jester did  _ what _ ?” Caleb demanded.

“Oh, hey,” said Caduceus. He and Yasha were sitting on the couch. “That was pretty fast.”

“Good news?” Yasha asked, and then caught sight of all their faces.

Beau explained, briefly. “So we’re going back to Eiselcross, right away,” she said. Then she looked at Caduceus sitting on the couch. “Or some of us are.”

“Some of us?” Veth asked.

“We don’t split up,” Jester said. “We all go. Then we can give Caduceus the cure right away.”

“In the past splitting up hasn’t gone great,” Veth agreed.

“I’d like to agree with you,” Caduceus said, “But I think I would slow you down.”

“Are you even feeling up for something like that?” Veth asked, casting a critical eye over Caduceus. He was hunched in on himself, blanket hitched up to his ears.

“I could probably do it,” Caduceus said. “But I don’t think it—it wouldn’t be a good time.”

“So Caduceus, he is staying,” Caleb said. “Who is staying with him?”

“Jester and Caduceus stay,” Beau pitched.

“Her magic, it does him no good,” Caleb reminded, “And I do not like the idea of going back there with no clerics.”

Jester nodded. “You guys can’t go back there without either of us.”

“Nobody has to stay,” Caduceus said. “I don’t like the idea of you guys being short-handed out there.”

“We will already be short-handed,” Caleb said, gesturing meaningfully at Caduceus.

Caduceus nodded, acknowledging. “Don’t see the need to make it worse.”

“And I don’t like the idea of you here alone,” Beau crossed her arms. “It’s gonna get worse, right? What if something happens?” She looked meaningfully at Fjord, who blinked at her, confused.

“Yeah, Caduceus,” Jester chimed in. “You’re sick, so you need someone to take care of you!”

“I’m good at taking care of myself,” Caduceus said. “Don’t worry about it.”

The expressions of the Mighty Nein suggested they were, in fact, worrying about it. “What if you—I don’t know, faint again?“ Fjord asked.

“I’d wake up on the floor, I guess,” Caduceus said steadily.

“Fjord wouldn’t be there to catch you,” Jester threw in, worriedly.

“I would like to stay,” Yasha said. The rest of them looked at her. She lifted her chin. “I don’t know too much about taking care of people, but I have some healing powers. I would like to be with Caduceus. And I do not like that place.”

“Well,” Veth said, “I do know about taking care of people. I’ll stay too. That gives you Caleb and Jester and Fjord and Beau. Is that enough?”

“We’ll manage,” Beau said.

“So will we,” Veth said.

“Thank you,” Caduceus said. “You really don’t both need to stay.”

“You’re supposed to get taken care of when you’re sick,” Jester put in again. “Weren’t you?”

“When I was a kid,” Caduceus allowed. “But I was—alone for a while before you all came by. I got pretty good at it.”

“Good at being alone?”

“Good at taking care of myself,” he said, “But that too.”

“That’s a sad thing to be good at,” Jester pronounced.

“I’m staying,” Yasha said. “You will not change my mind.”

Caduceus looked at her, and then Veth. “Thank you,” he said.

“Don’t mention it,” Veth said. “Nobody gets left behind.”

“We’ll use Sending a lot,” Jester said. “Every night to keep in touch!”

“I can do that too,” Caduceus said.

She rocked on her heels. “You’re going to be fine! We’re going to find the cure like, so fast.”

They split up then, scattering across the house to prepare. Beau was the last to go, lingering in the room. She leaned in to look at Caduceus again, who looked straight back. An impromptu staring contest ensued. Beau eventually blinked and looked away.

“Well?” Caduceus asked.

“You don’t look worried.”

“I have faith in you,” he said simply.

“Yeah, okay,” she said. “No pressure or anything.”

“None at all.”

“Only a matter of life or death,” she said.

“Isn’t everything?”

“Guess so,” she said. “Take care of yourself, Deuces.”

“Don’t have to,” he said cheerfully.

That startled a little huff of a laugh out of her. “Guess that’s true. Be here.”

“I will,” he said. “One way or another.”

“None of that cryptic bullshit,” she said. “Be here.”

“I’ll try.”

“Good,” she said. “Was kind of surprised Yasha said she’d stay. Kind of glad, though. She’s like—blessed by the gods and shit, right? That kind of place...”

“I’m glad to have her with me,” Caduceus said. “Though I know you could have used her.”

“Kind of weird that Fjord didn’t say anything,” she put in.

“Not really,” Caduceus said. “He likes to do things. Finding the cure will feel useful. Sitting here, watching things get worse—he’d feel useless. I’m glad he’s going.”

“No, you’re not,” she said.

“No,” he said. “I think it’s for the best. But I’m sorry he’s going.”

“You could ask him to stay,” Beau said. “Bet he would if you asked.”

“He would be restless and unhappy, and you need him,” Caduceus said. “And I’m gonna be fine, remember?”

“Yeah?”

“So I’ll see him again pretty soon,” he said.

“Don’t want to tell him anything first?”

“No,” Caduceus said.

“He’s an idiot,” Beau said. “He won’t figure it out on his own.”

“That’s alright,” he said. “Do you think you won’t find it?”

“We’ll fucking find it,” she said.

“Then stop trying to put my affairs in order,” he said. “It’ll all keep. I’ll see you again soon.”

She nodded. “Right.” She reached out and gripped his shoulder briefly and then left. In the hall, she flexed her hand, worried—even through his clothes and the blanket, she’d felt the chill emanating from his skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you can, please leave a comment! They mean a lot.
> 
> I'm [catalists](http://catalists.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr or [@chromecatalists](https://twitter.com/chromecatalists/) on Twitter.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"We'll be back soon," Fjord said. "It'll be fine."_
> 
> _"And what if it's not?" Beau said. "What's the last thing you said to him?"_
> 
> _Fjord stared at her. "I don't know?"_
> 
> _"You want to wonder that for the rest of your life?"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Jelly for beta-reading!

Beau went to find Yasha as soon as she'd left Caduceus, flexing her hand to try to rid it of the uncomfortable cold feeling. The aasimar was standing in the kitchen with one of the cupboards open. Beau went and stood beside her, tilting her chin up to see over Yasha's shoulder. The cupboard was full of rows of little jars and packets.

"I don't know what any of these are," Yasha said.

Beau peered doubtfully at them. Then she grabbed one that looked familiar from the lowest shelf, tilting it so the fine brown powder inside shifted. She sniffed it. "Cinnamon," she said. "Are these Caddyshack's?"

"Some of them are spices," she said. "Some of them are herbs. I can't tell them apart."

Beau shrugged, and spun the glass jar, but it wasn't labeled. None of them were, she realized. "Aren't you supposed to have something to tell you what it is?"

"Caduceus knows," Yasha said.

"I guess no one else uses them," Beau said. None of them had really cooked at all before Caduceus came around. In towns, they'd availed themselves of whatever the tavern had on the menu; camping had meant something made for travel or else clumsily dished up. Beau had never cooked much for herself. She was sure Caleb was the same. Jester had certainly never lifted a finger towards one of her own meals before leaving home, and Fjord had been able to manage the basics, but he'd also never had a kitchen of his own. Veth--she supposed Veth did know how to cook, had been a housewife once, but she'd never seemed particularly inclined to pick up the habit again for them. So the kitchen became Caduceus's territory.

"Maybe I'll ask him to label them," Yasha said.

"I don't know if he knows how to write," Beau joked. Then she frowned--she couldn't remember if she'd ever seen Caduceus write, come to think of it. He knew how to read, she was sure of that--four languages. "Can you know how to read and speak a language but not write it?"

Yasha said, "I don't know," but Beau wasn't sure if she'd really heard her. Her gaze was far away.

"Hey," Beau said. "What's wrong?"

Yasha turned and looked at her. "I am worried," she said.

"Yeah," Beau said. "Me too. But we'll find the cure."

"I'm not worried about that," Yasha said. "I--well, no, I am worried about that. But I do have--I think you can do it. But please be safe. I do not like that place." She sighed. "I am worried that I will not do a good job taking care of him. I do not know very much about taking care of people."

"You'll do great," Beau said. She hesitated. "Can I ask...why did you want to stay, if..."

"Because I want to be," Yasha said. "Because Caduceus has done a very good job taking care of me, and I don't like the idea of him being...alone. I want to learn."

"That's, uh," Beau felt out of her depth, and a little awed, as she often was by Yasha. "That's--I mean, that's good. That's great."

The words felt deeply inadequate for what Beau really wanted to express, which was the feeling she often got looking at Yasha, that she was amazing. Not just hot and dangerous--although she was--but somebody that Beau respected. Whoever Yasha had been in the past, she was rapidly becoming something else now, becoming good. Beau didn't really know what her place was in something like that, aside from to watch it happen and be impressed, kind of like watching a sunset or a bird take flight.

She was sure enjoying the watching while she figured it out, though.

"It's not really great," Yasha said, oblivious to Beau's internal turmoil. "I am glad Veth is staying. I don't know how to cook. Well, except spiders and things. I think I could cook some spiders."

"The kill-it-and-roast-it-on-a-spit kind of cooking," Beau nodded.

"Yes," Yasha said. She momentarily brightened. "Do you think we could try that?"

"If you kill some fungi," Beau said doubtfully. "He doesn't eat meat, remember?"

Yasha wilted. "Right."

"I'm sure you'll figure it out," Beau said, trying to be comforting. "I mean, Deucey's really great at cooking, right? I bet he can teach you.”

"I guess so," she said. "Do you think it's--I don't want him to have to teach me how to take care of him. Doesn't that, what would you call it. Defeat the purpose?"

Beau considered it. "No," she said. "I mean, he's still in pretty good shape, right? You can help out and he can show you some stuff. Maybe we'll be back and he'll mostly still be running around, right?"

Yasha, never one to sugarcoat things, finished the thought with a nod. "And if things get worse, he will have taught me some things before it happens."

"Yeah," Beau said. "We'll be back as soon as we can, though."

"Please be careful," Yasha said.

"For sure," Beau said. "I'll miss having you to watch my back."

"I will miss watching your back," Yasha said. Then she grinned. "And the rest of you."

Beau sputtered. "Yeah, uh--you, you too."

"There you are!" The tension was broken when the kitchen door swung open. It was Jester, dressed in her furs. "Oh my gosh, Beau, you're not dressed at all!"

"Just taking care of some stuff," Beau said. "I'm gonna go now. I'll be careful. You, uh. Take care too," Beau awkwardly went to pat Yasha on the shoulder, and Yasha moved and caught her hand and squeezed it.

"I will," Yasha said.

"Your hands are warm," Beau said, stupidly.

Yasha brought the other one up and captured Beau's second hand. "I think they are a normal temperature?"

"It's nice," Beau said. "It's great." She caught sight of Jester out of the corner of her eye. The tiefling's gaze was flicking back and forth between them like she was watching a tennis match. "I'm gonna--get my shit."

"Yes," Yasha said, and released her.

"See you soon," Beau said, and escaped. She slipped past Jester and encountered Fjord in the entryway. He wasn't wearing his coat, but it was lying on the ground at his feet as he checked the buckles on his armor.

"Hey," she said. "You talk to Deucey?"

"No?" Fjord said. "Was I supposed to?"

"Go say goodbye, you dumbass."

"We'll be back soon," Fjord said. "It'll be fine."

"And what if it's not?" Beau said. "What's the last thing you said to him?"

Fjord stared at her. "I don't know?"

"You want to wonder that for the rest of your life?"

Fjord's expression hardened. "He'll be fine."

"Yeah," Beau said. "I think so too. But I'm not gonna bet the farm on it."

"I don't even know what that means," said Fjord exasperatedly, but as she went upstairs to her room, she saw him turn and head for the other room.

\---

Caduceus hadn’t moved from the couch; he was hunched over a little, and between that and the fact he was sitting, Fjord found that he was almost a full head taller for the first time. “Caduceus,” he said. “Are you alright?” It wasn’t what he’d meant to say, but it was the first thought that came into his head.

“Yeah,” Caduceus said, his gaze refocusing on Fjord. Despite his apparent distraction, Fjord didn’t have the sense he’d managed to startle him—one of his ears was still swiveled towards the door. “I’m alright.” He smiled.

“I wanted to, uh, say goodbye before we left.” The words felt heavier than he had meant them to, weighing on his tongue. Fjord silently cursed Beau. He hadn’t been thinking of it like that before she’d said it—thinking of it  _ as _ a goodbye. But it felt like one now, and he didn’t have the words for it.

“That’s nice,” Caduceus said. “How are your knees?”

“What?” But now that Caduceus had said it, Fjord remembered that they were throbbing. “Okay. A little bruised.”

“I think I can do something about that.” Caduceus rested a hand on Fjord’s pantleg and murmured something. The familiar itching warmth swarmed through his skin, and the pain vanished.

“Thanks,” Fjord said.

“It’s kind of a hike, might be better to be fixed up,” Caduceus said. The smile disappeared, and he continued, “To be honest, I’m a little worried about it.”

“About—“ Fjord was thrown. Caduceus hadn’t betrayed it before. “Are you feeling worse? Do we need to--” there was no solution that came to mind, of course—it was a disease with only one cure, and they had already made the most direct plans to get it. “Do something?” he finished, lamely. Not that there was something to do.

“What?” Caduceus stared at him. “Oh, no, no. I’ll be just fine. Don’t worry about me.”

“I—“ Fjord was about to say ‘I wasn’t the one worried’ except that he was, had been since he’d seen Caduceus crumple in the kitchen like a puppet with its strings cut and in a deeper, more aching way since Beau had started going on about last words and goodbyes. “What are you worried about?”

“The rest of you going back there,” Caduceus said. “It’s not a really nice place, is it?”

Fjord couldn’t help but laugh. “No, not really.”

“I’d feel better if…” his fingers tugged absently at the edge of the blanket. “I’d like to be able to be there. But I know that’s—maybe not a good idea.”

“We’ll be careful,” Fjord promised. “We’re great at that.”

That got the smile to return. “You’re really not.”

“No,” Fjord admitted. “But it’s usually fine.” He added, “Although we normally have you.” Two clerics was a safety net, especially a cleric like Caduceus—Fjord had lost track of the number of times when Caduceus shielded him from danger, when he saw the soft green glow of Caduceus’s magic soften what might have been a fatal blow or felt the itching warmth of his healing sealing a wound beneath his rent armor.

“Yes,” Caduceus said. “That’s what I’m worried about.”

“We’ll be especially careful,” Fjord said. “How about that?”

“I would appreciate it,” he said. “I don’t want to have to come after you.”

Fjord grimaced involuntarily. If Yasha, Veth, and Caduceus had to come after them—well, they’d have to avail upon Essek for transport, first of all, although considering what they knew, Fjord was pretty sure they’d be able to manage that. But if they were so long delayed that a search party was sent, something bad would have probably happened to them already.

And by that time, what state would Caduceus be in? He already looked ill, his veins standing out blue, paler than usual, and shivering even bundled in the blanket.

And he was still sitting on the couch where they had left him.

It wasn’t that Caduceus never sat still; he did quite frequently. Fjord had sat with him many times, on the roof under the tree, or camping somewhere, or in a park, listening to the wind and the hum of the insects or the rush of the sea. But he usually did it in a deliberate way, underneath his tree, or with the rest of them, watching at the kitchen table.

“Are you—would you like to go upstairs?” Fjord blurted. “Or into the kitchen?”

“I will in a minute,” Caduceus said. “I’m a little…” he waved a hand. “My head is spinning a little.”

“Do you want tea?” Fjord asked.

Caduceus smiled a little sheepishly. “I’m sure it’ll pass, I can make it after.”

“I’ll get it for you,” Fjord said. “What kind? And what does it look like?” Caduceus kept the tea in neat little bags, but Fjord couldn’t have told you what was in most of them.

“Something with ginger,” Caduceus said. “You can tell by the smell.”

“Good for nausea,” Fjord said. He’d seen Caduceus make it before, when someone was queasy, and it had recalled the memory of new sailors chewing bits of ginger candy before they got their sea legs.

“Yes,” Caduceus said, brightening.

“I’ll be right back,” Fjord said. “Stay here.”

“Are you sure you have time?” Caduceus asked.

“Yes,” Fjord said, resolutely. Beau hadn’t even been dressed for Eiselcross when he’d seen her head upstairs, and he knew that all of her things had exploded across her room when they arrived. It would take her a while to pack.

“Don’t worry if you need to go,” Caduceus said. “I can ask Veth or Yasha.”

Fjord felt a faint, unaccountable annoyance at that. “I’ll make time,” he said, and took one look at Caduceus’s expression, eyes slightly widened but countenance unreadable overall, before he hurried to the kitchen. He turned over the feeling in his head as he set the kettle boiling. It didn’t make sense—he was glad Veth and Yasha were staying. The idea of staying himself felt—in some ways good, but also untenable. Making tea now was well and good, but he couldn’t let the others go to Eiselcross without him.

Yasha and Veth would take care of Caduceus. But Fjord could do this one thing, before he left.

No one else was in the kitchen, and Fjord took the moment alone. The kettle boiled, and then whistled. Fjord found a sharp-smelling blend in one of the sachets. He could hear Caduceus’s voice in his head as he went, dictating how long to steep it, how to pour. How to wait until the boiling had just stopped before pouring the water over the leaves. He had retrieved a cup at first, and then went and got the squat green pot from the shelf of Caduceus’s things and made a whole pot of it. Kettle to pot, where the tea turned the water orangish gold. Fjord counted the minutes out steadily and then tipped it from pot to cup.

Caduceus had moved that time, so that he was leaning against the arm of the couch with his legs up on it. His eyes, half-closed, opened as Fjord stepped through the door.

“I made you tea,” Fjord said, unnecessarily.

“Thank you,” Caduceus said. He took the cup gingerly, two handed—their fingers brushed together and Fjord was struck by how cold his fingers were.

“I’m sorry,” Fjord said.

“What for?” Caduceus looked up from the tea into Fjord’s face. “It looks perfect.”

“I thought I’d healed you,” he said. Then he added, a little unfairly, “You didn’t say anything.”

“I should have,” Caduceus admitted, freely. “I thought it was nothing.”

“Weren’t you feeling ill?” Fjord asked.

“Yes, but—“

“But nothing,” Fjord said. “You feel sick, you tell us. Something’s wrong, you tell us. We’re your friends, Caduceus. We want to help you. Let us help you.”

“I’m sorry,” Caduceus said.

“Don’t be sorry,” Fjord said. “Just—take care of yourself.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Your best is very good.”

“I don’t know about that,” Caduceus tried to laugh it off.

“I do,” Fjord said. “So do the rest of them. You’ve taken care of all of us.” He remembered again the shielding green light, the warmth of Caduceus’s hands as he healed them, nothing like the chill of his fingers now.

“Thank you,” Caduceus said.

“I didn’t do anything,” Fjord said.

“You’ve done a lot,” Caduceus said, and although he lifted the teacup and drank from it, Fjord was pretty sure that wasn’t what he meant.

\---

Jester came in to get him, then. As Caleb gathered them all to teleport, they launched into last minute planning. “We’ll use Sending to call you every night,” Jester said. “If you don’t hear from us, then Caduceus will call us. And then everyone will know how things are going. I’ll try really hard to save a spell though.”

“Be careful,” Yasha said, her eyes on Beau.

“You as well,” Caleb was the one who answered, and Fjord looked at Yasha, at Veth with her crossed arms, at Caduceus and the blue veins and he met Fjord’s eyes and smiled in the instant before they vanished.

They retraced their steps, teleporting into Palebank and taking the ferry to Foren, where they disembarked and began the long journey through the snow. Caleb‘s perfect memory kept them on a consistent path—no second-guessing the way to the crash site. If things had shaken out differently, Fjord could have imagined returning to treasure hunt or research on their own, someday; now he knew that if they made it out of here unscathed this time, they would never come back.

Eiselcross was a cold and forbidding place; Fjord found it hard to imagine that Caduceus was a creature of the Biting North. It seemed like a place like that should breed colder people, harder people, than Caduceus. He was from the Greying Wildlands rather than this strange winter wasteland, Fjord supposed, which might have made all the difference. But it also might have been Caduceus—a green, soft-leaved plant forcing its way upward, spreading itself gently through the earth wherever its seed landed, paying no attention to the cold.

They put up the Mansion the first several nights, although the joyous novelty of it was dimmed with the absence of three of their members. Fjord still had mixed feelings about the privacy of his room—some days he liked it, but now it felt big and empty, and he kept waking in the night and trying to hear the sound of Caduceus snoring from his bedroll on the floor before he remembered.

The dreams were the worst part. He dreamed again of the spores, of Caduceus breathing them in, except instead of what happened originally where none of them had even realized something was wrong, he began to shiver immediately, his veins and then the rest of him going blue, and Fjord grabbed him and held him, holding Caduceus against his body to try and impart warmth into him.

It never worked. He always turned to ice beneath Fjord’s hands, and he woke up with his gaze watery and shouting for someone to help, to do something. It was the same helplessness gripping him as he’d felt in that cave when Caduceus had been compelled towards Vokodo, paddling blindly above the water, yelling for someone to help, except he somehow knew that it was even more futile.

The third night they slept in the dome because Caleb had used too much magic fighting frozen worms to conjure the manor. Jester made her nightly call in earshot this time. “Hi, guys! We’re all fine. We fought some worms! We’re getting closer I think—Caleb, we’re getting pretty close right?” Caleb nodded and Jester finished, “Anyway hope you are good!” Then she sat quietly, getting a response. “Caduceus says they are doing okay and that they’re glad we’re safe.”

“Safe is not the right word, maybe,” Caleb said. He was staring out into the darkness. “But we are all fine for now.”

“Maybe we should keep a watch,” Fjord suggested, following Caleb’s gaze and watching the white flakes swirl outside.

“That is not a bad idea,” said Caleb.

“I can go first,” Fjord said, maybe too quickly. He wasn’t eager to go back to his dreams.

“I’ll go with you,” said Beau. “Then Caleb and Jes can go second.”

He and Beau sat quietly for a while as Jester and Caleb curled up and drifted off. The dome itself should have been more comfortable with four people instead of seven—they had some personal space instead of practically curling up on top of each other—but Fjord didn’t like it. It felt empty.

Eventually, Beau spoke. “How’re you doing?”

“Fine, yeah, good,” said Fjord.

“Scary shit, right?” Beau said. “Seeing Caddyshack like that.”

“He wasn’t that bad,” Fjord objected reflexively.

“Looked pretty bad. And he fell pretty hard. How’re your knees?” Beau asked, pointedly.

“Fine.” As a point of fact, they’d bruised dark blue where they’d struck the floor, except that Caduceus had healed them. Caduceus, who was still mostly fine. “He’s got—his shit. He’ll be fine,” Fjord said.

“What, his goddess shit? That doesn’t work on this stuff?” Beau asked. “Dude.”

Fjord didn’t like to think too hard about that—the idea that there was something Melora couldn’t touch, first of all, but also the idea of Caduceus helpless. He wasn’t a helpless person. Fjord had known him to be scared, uncertain, lost, confused—all those things, sure. But he always seemed to handle it with an unassailable assuredness and grace. Even blinking back to consciousness in the kitchen—he’d seemed so calm about it. Fjord admired, and sometimes viciously envied, that calm. “He’s Caduceus. He’s—you know, he just deals with stuff.”

“I’m not saying he won’t deal,” Beau said. “I’m saying he could fucking die.”

“He won’t, because we’re going to find the cure.”

“Yeah, but it’s fine if you’re worried.”

“I’m not worried,” Fjord lied through his teeth.

“You’re so full of shit, Captain Let’s-Keep-Watch-in-the-Impenetrable-Dome.”

“I hate this place,” Fjord said.

“I know. You’re not sleeping,” Beau said.

“I am.”

“You keep waking me up kicking me in your stupid nightmares.”

“If I wasn’t sleeping I wouldn’t be having nightmares,” Fjord said pedantically.

“Not about Uk’otoa this time, right?”

He almost said yes, they were, just to shut her up, but relented. “No.”

“You dream about him dying?”

“What, did you too?”

“No.”

“So, what, that a lucky guess?”

“Not so lucky,” Beau said. “You say his name in your sleep. And I saw you crying yesterday morning.”

“My eyes were just watery. From the cold.”

“You’re so full of shit,” Beau said again.

“Yeah,” Fjord admitted. “Can we not talk about it?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Fine.”

“Thanks.”

“Go to sleep,” she said. “This is stupid.”

Fjord glared, but eventually lay back down, unwilling to admit he was afraid to see Caduceus turn to ice behind his eyelids again. He lay there pretending to sleep for a long while, and eventually he must have fooled her, because Beau never would have reached over and rested a comforting hand on his arm had she believed that he was awake.

The dreams continued as they hiked through the white wastes, following the molten river. Caleb pointed the way, except when the blizzards began to hit and Jester had to cast Find The Path to keep leading them forward. Beau was unusually quiet and when she did speak, Fjord couldn’t keep up a rapport. Caleb kept looking for Veth. A journey that was perilous but fun the first time around had turned into a frantic, silent march the second.

Fjord’s unease grew the closer they came to the crash site. This place was built to kill the gods. He had not internalized that fact the first time, but now it was all he could think about. This was a place made to destroy the Wildmother. Made to hurt someone like Caduceus.

The churning in the pit of his stomach, he realized, was fear. Fear to go back into a place like this, and fear that by the time they came back out it would be too late. He hadn’t been afraid the first time, but he should have been.

They all should have been. They should have known—but they couldn’t have known. Caduceus had barely said a thing. Fjord wondered if it had been Jester, who complained about the slightest sniffle, if they might have realized. If someone else might have told a cleric their spell didn’t work. But of course it was Caduceus, stubborn quiet Caduceus, who would suffer silently rather than tell anyone they had failed to aid him. Who would wait patiently for the hurt to go away by itself.

Until it didn’t. Until it became clear it wouldn’t. Fjord wanted to be there, with him, watching him, even though he knew he’d go mad sitting in a house crossing his fingers that the others made it home with the cure in time. This was where he was meant to be. He was sure of it; felt it with even more surety than the miserable sick feeling in his gut at this cursed place.

This place had been built to kill people like Caduceus, people like Fjord now. Built to strike down their god. Without thinking about it, he called Dwueth’var to his hand. A place made to destroy people like Caduceus.

Well. Let them try. Fjord would be waiting for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you can, please leave a comment! They mean a lot.
> 
> I'm [catalists](http://catalists.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr or [@chromecatalists](https://twitter.com/chromecatalists/) on Twitter.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Caretaker,” Yasha said, suddenly. “That’s what they call someone, who looks after a place. That’s what you were.”_
> 
> _“Gravekeeper, yeah,” he said._
> 
> _“Keeper,” she said. “I like that. Keeping—things. People. I want to do that.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Jelly for beta-reading!

The house felt empty as soon as Caleb’s spell carried the others away in a burst of light, a silence lingering in the spaces they should have been occupying. Their absence, too, was a shadow, a reminder of the reason why they were away. Yasha hated it instantly; her every instinct drove her to leave, to wander into the market, find a storm or a fight to lose herself in.

But she couldn’t. Or rather, she wouldn’t. Because she could have; Veth could have kept watch over Caduceus, and he would have forgiven her absence. But Yasha was thinking a lot about who she wished to be—who that person with light hair and wings growing unfamiliar and very familiar all at once was meant to be. And she had plenty of people to model herself on; she wanted Jester’s warmth, and Beau’s fierce strength, and Caleb’s careful memory for not just his spells but also his friends.

Maybe most of all, though, she wanted Caduceus’s steadiness; she wanted to be able to stand sentinel, guard a place or a group of people, weather a storm and not merely cut through it. Caduceus’s strength was the strength of stone—or maybe the strength of clay, she thought with a faint trace of amusement. To endure, and not break.

Caduceus would endure this. And Yasha would stand with him, and learn. It would be cruel of her to run away now.

Instead, she sat beside him on the couch. He had a cup of tea in his hands, half-full; it had the sharp smell of ginger. “Hello,” he said.

“Hi,” Yasha said. “Did you make that?”

He shook his head, and then winced. “Oh. No, Fjord did.”

“Are you okay?” She didn’t like the expression of pain that had crossed his face.

“A little bit of a headache,” he said. “That’s all.”

“Do you want to go upstairs?” she asked. “Go to bed?”

“It’s still early,” he said.

“It’s afternoon,” she refuted. “You could take a nap.”

“Maybe later,” he deflected.

“Alright.” Yasha was reluctant to push—what if it was rude, or made things more unpleasant? Or was it better to force him to take care of himself, even if it made her annoying or pushy.

“What’s wrong?” Caduceus asked.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said, quickly, even though she recognized the futility of lying even as she did it. “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think I know how to take care of people.”

“Oh, that’s not true.”

“It is!” Yasha looked at him and decided to lay all her cards on the table. “I’m sitting here going—should I make him go to bed? Is that worse? I know he’s very stubborn and will downplay everything that’s wrong, but he also knows better than me how he is feeling. So do I annoy you until you go to bed? If I do, is that even the best thing for me to do? Or are you just going to be angry at me?”

He laughed; the sound of it startled her enough to break off. “You never really know, do you.”

“How do you tell what’s best for people?”

“Hmm. I don’t know.” He considered it for a long moment. “I try to take a good look at them and—tell.”

“I don’t read people very well,” Yasha said. “So I need you to be honest with me. I promised I would take care of you, so you have to let me.”

“Alright,” he agreed.

“Do you need to take a nap?”

“No,” he said. “I’m—tired, but I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep.”

“Okay,” she accepted it. “Do you want to stay here?”

“What do you need to do?” he asked her.

“I’m here to take care of you,” she reiterated. “I don’t—need to do anything else.”

“I don’t need anything right now,” he said. “I’d like your company, though, so how about you do whatever you were planning to do and I’ll sit with you.”

“Okay,” she agreed, with a rush of relief. “I was—going to clean some of my gear, and then press some of the flowers.”

“That sounds like a nice day,” he said.

So they ended up in Yasha’s room, settled on her floor. Yasha cleaned her swords carefully, her bracers, making sure the edges were sharp and everything was polished up nicely. They’d been out of Eiselcross long enough that it was mostly maintenance. She had already wiped off the crusted ice and guts and grime that tended to build up when they traveled. She wouldn’t have to do that again for a while. Jester and Beau and Fjord, they’d come back with weapons that needed real attention.

Caduceus sat quietly in the corner, hands cupped around the mug of tea. He watched her work with an air of interest but not judgment; when she glanced up at him, she had the feeling that he was watching her the same way he might have watched insects in the garden. He cleaned his gear too, of course—she had sat with him as they both worked dried blood from clothing and mended armor. But she still had the sense that he was looking at her as some unknown natural thing whose business was its own.

She spent longer than she needed to on the sword, imagining blood on its edge that wasn’t there. She hadn’t killed anything. There was nothing to kill.

“What’s bothering you?” he asked.

“I wish this was something I could fight,” she said.

“Not everything is,” he said.

“You’re fighting it,” she said.

“I suppose so,” he agreed. Then he smiled. “You have my job, now.”

“What?”

“I don’t kill many things,” he said. “I keep you all up. Try to make it easier for you to do it.”

“Caretaker,” Yasha said, suddenly. “That’s what they call someone, who looks after a place. That’s what you were.”

“Gravekeeper, yeah,” he said.

“Keeper,” she said. “I like that. Keeping—things. People. I want to do that.”

“You’ve lost a lot of things,” Caduceus said. It was a blunt statement but the soft way he said it muted the blow. “It’s not surprising that you’d want to hold on a little.”

“I want to keep you,” she said, suddenly finding the words to explain what she and Beau had spoken about in the kitchen. “If I can’t fight it—I want to do what you do. I want to make it easier for you, for you to—stay here.”

“I want to stay here,” he said. “I—appreciate that.”

“You’ll have to show me how,” she said. “Please.”

“Alright,” he agreed.

Her stomach gurgled. She glanced down at it, startled; he laughed at her surprise and she joined in. “Has it gotten late?”

“I don’t know.” He stuck a finger in the half-inch of tea that remained in the mug. “Oh, that’s cold.”

“We didn’t really finish lunch,” she remembered. “Maybe we could have dinner early?” She stood up and offered him a hand. He took it, and she pulled him to his feet. For someone so tall, he weighed almost nothing—she was almost startled by how easily she got him up. Neither of them mentioned it, though, and so they went downstairs in companionable silence.

Veth was already in the kitchen. She’d dragged one of the chairs over from the table and was standing on it so that she could look into the pot on the stove. “I’m making dinner,” she said.

“I didn’t know you could cook,” Yasha said, surprised. Having seen some of what Nott considered to be acceptable cuisine—rats, Frumpkin, seagulls, Frumpkin again—she’d thought they probably had the same level of culinary ability. But the smell rising from the pot on the stove was nutty and sweet.

“What did you use?” Caduceus asked, moving closer.

“No meat,” she said. “I remembered.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I didn’t think you wouldn’t.”

She shrugged. “I know we forget. I bought some kind of squash. I used to make a pumpkin soup back in Felderwin. They had something a little different, but I think it will work about the same. I cut it up smaller in case it needs to cook down more.”

All of the words that Veth was using, Yasha had heard before, but never out of Veth. “I didn’t know you cooked,” she repeated.

“I was a housewife,” Veth said. “Of course I knew how to cook. Besides, halflings cook. That’s what we do. My mom was a great cook.”

Yasha followed Caduceus to the stove and looked into the pot. Even with Veth standing on a chair, Yasha was almost a head taller. The soup was thick and golden-colored and smelled even better close-up.

“Mmm,” she said.

Veth dipped a spoon into it and passed it to Caduceus. “What do you think?”

He tried it with no apparent hesitation. “Good,” he said. “We had a soup we made with butternut squash that was like this. Is that cinnamon?”

She nodded. “And nutmeg. I thought about cloves, but maybe too much.”

“That could be good,” he agreed. He went and dropped the spoon in the wash basin.

Yasha felt a little strangely bereft. She wasn’t jealous of Veth, exactly—or maybe she was. It’s just that she was still thinking of Veth a little bit as the wild goblin girl that she’d first met, stealing from everyone they passed, whispering to Caleb, gnawing on stray bones. She’d thought they were still kindred spirits in that way, wild tangled people who didn’t know how to care for things, how to keep them. But of course Veth knew—had always known. And really, seeing Nott and Caleb, Yasha should have known anyway. The core of Veth, fiercely loving and brave and adventurous, had never been so far beneath the surface of Nott.

This had been in her, all along. And whatever pieces of her past Yasha had forgotten—it wasn’t this, she was sure of it. There were no layers to peel back and find a gentle, careful person beneath.

“What else is in it?” Caduceus asked, drawing Yasha out of her thoughts. He was looking at Veth and the stove, but one of his ears was turned entirely towards her, and she caught the occasional sideways flicker of his gaze. Keeping an eye.

“It’s probably similar to yours,” Veth said, but she talked through it anyway. Yasha couldn’t have sworn that Caduceus had asked for her benefit, but she thought he had, and gratefully, quietly committed it to memory.

\---

Over the next few days, they developed a routine. Caduceus’s strength waxed and waned, but in a fairly predictable way—he was fairly clear-eyed in the mornings, and he meditated while Yasha exercised and then they went downstairs to cook breakfast together. They were lessons without either of them really saying anything about it. Yasha learned to make omelets, and oatmeal, and pancakes with fresh blueberries in them. They made sausage and bacon, too, the meat last in the pan in deference to Caduceus’s preferences. She learned to put butter in the skillet to stop it from sticking, the right amount of force to crack the egg without sending bits of shell flying. There was a delicacy to it that made Yasha nervous to try and giddy every time she succeeded. She could be careful. She could be gentle.

Veth would wander in when the food was almost done, still bleary-eyed, and they would all have breakfast together. Then they would all clean up, Caduceus because he never relinquished work, Veth because she hadn’t cooked and insisted that was how it worked, and Yasha because she felt strange sitting there or walking away when the others were cleaning. In the rest of the mornings they ran errands, Caduceus gardened, and Veth drifted in between household chores and experiments in the laboratory.

By lunch, Caduceus was flagging—usually Veth put something together, or Yasha made sandwiches or simply heated leftovers, and Caduceus would doze off in Yasha’s room or the garden, shivering no matter how many blankets she piled up. In the eternal twilight of the city, there was no sunlight to chase away Yasha’s fears, and in those long hours her worry would build.

Sometimes she tried to train, punching the bag over and over again in the hopes she could beat the spores out of him by proxy. Sometimes she ran, jogging through the city until her legs burned and her chest heaved, trying to forget. Sometimes she just wandered.

It had always been Yasha’s way, to flee when things got bad. And sometimes she caught a glimpse of storm clouds on the horizon, and the thought drifted through her head. But she always went back to the house and would go and sit by Caduceus until he stirred and they went together to help with dinner.

The evenings, they spent together. The house felt a little empty with just the three of them, and they tried to fill the space by cooking together, playing card games whose rules only Veth really understood, or just sitting together quietly. Jester called one of them every night; she seemed to be switching off. It usually came just before sunset.

“It feels like they call early,” Yasha frowned, on the second day. “Aren’t they still traveling?”

“It gets dark earlier,” Veth said. “In the north. Don’t you remember?”

Yasha hadn’t—really, she hadn’t noticed. The days had felt very long, although she supposed that the icy weather had simply been exhausting to travel through.

“That gives them less time to look,” Yasha said.

“They’ll manage,” Caduceus said.

It was hard to argue with Caduceus, when he was the one who had the most cause to be afraid. But he never seemed to waver in his faith in the others, and so Yasha could never bring herself to express doubt.

The morning that Yasha made a perfect pancake, all by herself, she whooped and then spun around to see that Caduceus wasn’t watching. He’d sat down heavily in the kitchen chair that now stood permanently by the counter so Veth could reach.

“Caduceus!” she dropped the pancake onto the plate and dropped to her knees beside him. “What’s wrong?”

“Just tired.” He lifted his head and smiled at her. “I didn’t sleep well last night. That’s all.”

It became clear that wasn’t  _ all _ , though, because more sleep didn’t cure it. By the next day, when Caduceus was still moving more slowly, joints stiff and painful, it was clear that the disease had gotten worse. They still managed their routine, but more slowly, and Yasha was relieved that she’d mastered some of the fine motor skills of the kitchen to take more of the burden from him.

“It’s gotten worse,” Yasha said, when they were sitting in the garden in the late morning. Veth had come up too and was fletching arrows. “Hasn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said. “I think so. But we knew it would progress.”

“It feels fast,” Veth frowned, prodding at a crossbow bolt. “I thought it would happen more slowly.”

“It could have been slower,” Caduceus allowed. “Could have been faster, too.”

“I’m going to tell them,” Yasha said. “Tonight. It’s my turn for Jester to call.”

“Why worry them?” Caduceus asked. “They can’t go any faster.”

“They might be able to,” Veth said. “Anyway, they’d want to know. I know Caleb would want to know.”

“I’m going to tell them,” Yasha said, and then she caught the slight frown on Caduceus’s face. “Unless you really don’t want me to.”

“No,” Veth said. “Tell them anyway. He never wants to worry anyone. Well, it’s time to worry.”

“I don’t think it’s that bad,” Caduceus said, amused.

“It’s gotten worse,” Veth said. “It’s going to keep getting worse. Are you, actually—I have been meaning to ask you this. Are you actually okay with dying? I mean, are you  _ done _ ? I don’t want to die. I’m not done.”

"Are any of us ever done, really?" Caduceus asked. "I don't think too many people get the chance to say, alright, that's finished. I've done everything I meant to do...I don't even know what I meant to do, I don't think."

"You don't?" Veth said. She lifted an eyebrow, surprised. "I thought you knew exactly what you wanted."

"I knew--who I wanted to be. That's all."

"Ahead of the rest of us," Yasha said softly. "Who is that, then?"

"--good," Caduceus said. "I wanted to be good. A good cleric. A good son and a good brother. I don't really know about it..."

"You--Caduceus," Yasha said. "You are good."

"I try to be."

"You are," she said. "You were--the first thing I felt, when my chains broke in that cathedral, it was you. When I don't know what the right thing is, I'm not afraid anymore, because I know you can tell me. And if I ever lose myself again, I know I can follow you and find--who I want to be. If you wanted to be good--you were. You are."

"And you're not done," Veth said.

"None of us are ever done," Caduceus repeated.

"No," Yasha agreed. "But if you were worried. You are good."

"Then that's the best anyone can hope for, I think," Caduceus said. "To die with the people they love, having been who they wanted to be, and go back to the earth in the end."

"This isn't over," Veth said.

"No," Yasha agreed. "We still need you."

He shook his head. "You don't need me anymore."

"You have been so much help to all of us," Veth said. "You helped Jester, and Caleb, and Fjord, you helped Fjord so much--"

"Fjord--" Caduceus started and broke off. "He doesn't need me anymore. He's got it. All of you do."

"Maybe not. But we still want you here. Fjord wants you," Yasha added, casually.

"That sounded kind of dirty," Veth said, and then noticed Caduceus had flushed. "Oh, that was intentional."

"I'm kind of tired," Caduceus said, hastily. Veth was looking between them, clearly working some things out. Yasha patted his shoulder.

"You should go for it."

“We’ll see,” Caduceus said.

“Oh!” Veth said suddenly, and Yasha shot her a look that kept her silent.

“You said to me,” Yasha said. “That people always say, I thought I had more time. I think it—we’re going to try and make sure you do. But I think you would regret it. You don’t have as much time as you think.”

Caduceus laughed, low and rueful. “Are you telling me to take my own advice?”

“Yes,” Yasha said. “And mine. I do think he loves you. Even if he doesn’t know the words for it yet.”

“Alright,” Caduceus said. He closed his eyes. “Thank you, Yasha.”

She patted his shoulder. “Just returning the favor.”

He fell asleep leaning against the tree. Yasha got up and retrieved a second blanket and tucked it around him, even though she knew it would never stop the shivering entirely. Then she watched him for a while. The blue had darkened in his veins, so she could see it on more of his body than just his face—down the side of his neck and on the interior of his ears. She watched his chest rise and fall and matched her breathing to his, and without ever meaning to she fell asleep as well.

They woke up to a thud as Veth set a basket of fruit down on the ground beside them. They were all familiar to Yasha—cranberries, pomegranates, plums. “Essek dropped these off,” Veth said, leaning over them. “You should eat something, Deucey.”

“Alright,” he said amiably, sitting up slowly. The blanket slipped off his shoulders and Yasha immediately grabbed the end and pulled it back up. He smiled at her.

In addition to the basket, Veth had brought a knife half the size of her face. She sat at the base of the tree with them and went to work on the fruit, sawing a pomegranate in half and pressing it onto both of them.

Yasha took a bite. Veth winced. “You’re not—you’re not supposed to do that.”

“Why?” Yasha chewed, then swallowed. “It’s a little bitter, isn’t it?”

“You’re just supposed to eat the seeds,” Veth explained.

Caduceus was picking his apart carefully, plucking out the seeds. When he had eaten the ones he could reach, he pried at the edge, trying to peel back the skin.

“Do you want it broken open?” Yasha asked, and took it from him. It gave easily between her hands and split open to reveal a cache of ruby-colored seeds.

“It looks like the chambers of a heart,” she said, fascinated. “It’s beautiful.”

“I thought they grew in Xhorhas,” said Veth.

“Not where I was from,” Yasha said. “Nothing grew where I was from.”

“I’ve seen them before,” Caduceus said. “They grow up north, too.”

“There’s stories about them,” Veth commented as Yasha passed the half-fruit back to Caduceus. “About this girl who eats one in a garden in the Faewild and is trapped there forever.”

“Why?” Yasha asked.

“Because it belongs to the Fae,” she said. “And if you eat something that belongs to them, so do you.”

Caduceus put another handful of seeds in his mouth. One of them had broken, either from the knife or Yasha’s opening of the fruit or just his grip, and blood-red juice dripped down his hand. Veth and Yasha were both looking at him. There was red at his lips, too, which stood out against the blue veins visible in his face.

Then he licked the juice from his fingers. “Sometimes a pomegranate is just a pomegranate,” he said mildly.

They sat there and ate fruit and stared out over the skyline. It was always dark, but still the light changed, the pattern of the day, people moving back through the streets amid the eternal twilight. “I should make dinner,” Veth said, after an hour.

“I can help,” Caduceus said.

Neither of them got up to do it, though. They just sat and ate the fruit instead, the conversation ebbing and flowing, letting the day go like sand dripping down the glass.

“This wouldn’t be a bad place to die,” Yasha said, without realizing what she was going to say until the words were spoken.

“No one’s going to die here,” said Veth.

“No,” Yasha agreed, quickly.

“But you’re right,” Caduceus said. He tilted his head up and looked at the globes of light, swinging from the branches above them. “This wouldn’t be a bad place to go.”

“I want to die at home,” Veth said. “When I’m old and have sixty grandchildren.”

“You want Luc to have sixty kids?” Yasha asked.

“I have time to have more,” Veth said.

A long silence followed. “If you have six, they could do ten each,” Caduceus said, after counting on his fingers for a long while.

“I always figured I would die someplace bloody,” Yasha said. “And cold. And alone.”

“You won’t be alone,” Caduceus said. “I thought I would die at home. In the Grove. But this is a good place.”

“No one’s dying,” Veth said.

“No,” Yasha said. “But we could—we could go home. If you wanted to.”

Caduceus let out a low hum, considering. “Thank you,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

“Let us know if you change your mind,” Veth said.

He nodded. “I think ‘not alone’ is the important thing,” he said. “With people who love you.”

“We love you,” Yasha said, softly.

“I’ve never doubted that,” Caduceus answered. Veth silently dug out a bag of cherries and they ate them, not moving, as the moons rose.

_ “Yasha,”  _ Jester said in her ear.  _ “It’s me, Jester. We’re in Aeor now! We took a sliiiiightly different route to try and avoid those spore things and we fought some—“ _

_ “Mutant things! Anyway Caleb got kind of hurt a lot but don’t worry, I healed him and we’re all fine. How are you?”  _ There was a beat. “ _ Miss you!” _

“Hi Jester,” Yasha said. She gestured frantically at Veth, who lifted her hands to count for her. “I’m glad everyone’s okay. Please be careful. We are okay, but Caduceus has gotten sicker, so it would be better if you hurry.”

Some part of Yasha was waiting for another message, but eventually it became clear none was coming. It had taken Jester two for the first message—probably she didn’t have any more spell slots left. “She said they’re in Aeor now. That they fought mutant creatures and Caleb was hurt but they healed him.”

“Good,” Veth said, after a pause, although they’d all caught the way she stiffened when Yasha mentioned what Jester had said about Caleb. “Nothing else?”

Yasha shook her head. “But now they know.”

“Nothing to do but cross our fingers,” Veth said, and she tried to say it cheerfully but the undercurrent of frustration was clear. “Or pray, I guess. Have you tried asking the Wildmother, Caduceus?”

“I’ve talked to Her,” Caduceus said. “But divine magic can’t cure this, so…oh, that’s an idea, actually.”

“What is?”

“Wildmother,” Caduceus said instead of answering. Yasha liked to watch Caduceus pray; sometimes he closed his eyes, but sometimes he didn’t—like now, when he tilted his face up towards the branches of the tree, the globules of light swinging gently in the breeze. “If you can send some aid—our friends in Eiselcross could use it. Please help keep them safe and to find their way.”

For a moment, it felt as though the wind grew warmer. It rustled the branches and the lights swung and flickered, and Yasha drew in a breath of warm air, and then it faded.

“Did it work?” Veth asked, after a long silence.

Caduceus shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“How do you feel?” Yasha asked. She had felt, in that moment of warm wind, certain of the answer, but with it gone she couldn’t tell if she’d imagined it. “Did it help?”

“In what way?”

“Do you feel…less alone?”

He smiled at her. “I never feel alone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you can, please leave a comment! They mean a lot (especially today, which is a bit...stressful in my neck of the woods.)
> 
> I'm [catalists](http://catalists.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr or [@chromecatalists](https://twitter.com/chromecatalists/) on Twitter.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The clock runs down. Fjord has some realizations. Beau helps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to [silverkleptofox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverkleptofox) for the beta read! And sorry this one took so long--lot going on in the world and my world personally, but the last two chapters should be quicker.

_ Caduceus has gotten sicker, so it would be better if you hurry.  _

Yasha’s words, Fjord knew, but they bounced around his head in Jester’s voice. Her eyes had been wide and her expression solemn as she repeated the words back that evening, and even though he’d known how badly they needed to rest, Fjord had difficulty falling asleep.

But they had hurried. They had pushed across the landscape through the icy sleet of the next day, fighting exhaustion and walking against the biting wind. They had waited until it grew fully dark and risen early the next morning, every morning, pushing at the edges of the too-short days trying to eek out more time. On the days when the snow was thick and deep and slowed them down, Caleb and Jester carried Fjord and Veth as giant eagles.

Every time they stopped for the night, Fjord would begin to worry. He could only breathe properly after Jester made her nightly call, after she reported back that everything was fine.

“Caduceus says they’re doing well,” she said, the night before they reached the ruins. “He says that it’s been warm, and Yasha makes good pancakes now.”

“That’s--” Beau blinked. “That’s great. I want Yasha pancakes.”

“How is he doing?” Fjord asked. “How did he sound?”

“I mean,” Jester said. “I guess he just sounded like Caduceus. But you know, he never says anything, he would say he was fine even if he wasn’t because it’s not like we can do anything about it, you know?”

“We will move as quickly as we can,” Caleb said, with finality.

Caleb was right, Jester was right, and in a way maybe Caduceus was right to tell them about the weather and the cooking instead of about the creeping, growing disease spreading like a blight inside of him. But Fjord couldn’t help but worry.

Even now, as they descended into the dark of the ruins of Aeor, he felt as though they were moving too slowly. Too many days were passing, and with every one that slipped by, the odds of them making it back in time….

They would make it back in time. They were the Mighty Nein—minus three, anyway. 

They could make it back in time.

“What’s ‘four’ in Zemnian?” Fjord asked Caleb.

“ _ Vier, _ ” Caleb said. “Why?” He stood at the back, hand bathed in flame and outstretched, guiding the way forward. Beau stood sentinel at the front of the line, wearing her dark vision goggles. Fjord and Jester were sandwiched between, taking advantage of their own dark vision.

“The Mighty Vier,” Fjord said, butchering the pronunciation and feeling like a fool anyway.

It made Caleb crack a smile, though. “We are still the Mighty Nein.”

“The Half-Mighty Nein,” Jester suggested. Then she frowned. “Wait, that’s not good.”

“There aren’t even nine of us,” Beau objected.

“We will be the Mighty Nein,” Caleb said. “No matter what.”

Fjord almost objected, but ran his lip across his tusk instead. They would still be the Mighty Nein. Caleb didn’t mean anything bad by it. They were the Mighty Nein before Molly died, and after. They were the Mighty Nein before Caduceus had joined them.

Melora help him, Fjord hoped there would be no after.

“We’re the Mighty Nein!” Jester cheered in the gap left by Fjord’s silence. She had a sixth sense, Fjord thought, for when the rest of them were slipping into dark thoughts and she needed to pull them out. She knew as well as he did what was at stake. But when everyone else was terrified, she would refuse to give voice to her fears.

The least he could do was try and return the favor. “We’re the Mighty Nein,” he agreed. She grinned at him.

“It’s getting darker down here,” Caleb said. He vanished the flame and called up his spinning globules of light, sending them floating ahead.

“I could take out a Cele-bone?” Jester suggested.

“Perhaps if it gets darker,” Caleb said distractedly. “If we keep going down this way, there should be a lab.”

“Do you hear anything?” Jester asked Beau.

“No,” she said. “Don’t see anything either.”

“Well, it is very dark,” Caleb said reasonably.

“Well, I have night vision goggles,” Beau snapped back. “Where is it supposed to be?”

“Just up ahead,” Caleb said. He repeated that answer five minutes later, then ten, when Beau was starting to sound frustrated.

“It’s just more cold and white, you guys,” said Jester. “There’s snow down here.” She kicked at a pile of white, and some of it let out a soft whiff and fell.

“Oh,” Caleb said. “Oh. I think--I think it is here.”

“Where?”

“The wall here,” Caleb said. “This is not a wall, it is--the ceiling, it has caved in. That is why there is snow down here. The tunnel has collapsed.”

“Well,” Fjord said. “Where do we get through?”

“Let’s look around and see if we can find a passage,” Jester said. They commenced with the search, circling the room. Caleb and Beau seemed to be conducting a thoughtful investigation, looking for gods knew what--Fjord ended up just nudging at snowdrifts, hoping the white would fall away and reveal an entrance.

“There is no way through,” Caleb said, finally.

“Let’s go back,” Beau said. “Let me see that map.”

Fjord dug through his bag and handed it over. She peered at it, looking strange and insectoid with the goggles on. “There’s another entrance over here. We can try that way.”

“Where are we now?” Fjord asked. Beau stabbed at a different point, frustratingly far from the other entrance she’d indicated.

“And the lab is here,” Caleb added. He prodded the point on the map; so close to them, and yet so far through the physical barriers of collapsed ceilings and white snow.

“We go back,” said Caleb, and Fjord saw a flash of what that meant: Another half day’s travel back through the same tunnel, out into the blinding snow, only to repeat this again, only to lose more time...

“We know it’s here,” Fjord said, frustrated. “We should keep going.”

“It is caved in,” Caleb repeated, patiently.

“It’s just snow, you can melt snow,” Fjord said. “We know it’s down here—“

“We think it’s down here,” Beau said. “Based on the map that DeRogna gave us, and who knows if we can even trust her.  _ Bitch _ ,” she added, under her breath.

“And it will take, what, two more days to go around?” Fjord snapped. “Even if it is there, we don’t know if Caduceus has that much time.”

“Yasha said he was doing okay,” said Jester, but her voice was uncertain. “He said they were doing okay.”

“Yasha asked us to hurry,” Fjord reminded.

“We are hurrying,” Caleb said. “But if we all get buried in snow, we will not bring a cure back at all.”

“He is dying,” Fjord bit through his teeth, losing his composure, “And I don’t want to let him die while  _ we’re _ playing it safe!”

“Hey!” Beau snapped. “Cool the fuck down, Fjord. You think you’re the only person who cares about him?”

“I’m the only person acting like it,” Fjord shot back.

“Fuck you,” Beau said. “You’re acting like a fucking idiot, is what you’re acting like. We all know you love him but that doesn’t mean you need to lose your shit at us for making the decision most likely to  _ actually _ get us to the thing that will save his life.”

Fjord took a step back, thrown. “I’m not--” he broke off. “I just don’t want to let our friend die.”

“Whatever you want to call it, man,” Beau shrugged with more than a hint of annoyance. “You don’t get to take this shit out on us. You want to try and tunnel through snow? That shit’s heavy. It’ll take you longer. Even if you don’t hit wreckage.”

“Beau is right,” Caleb said quietly. “Even if I do, as you say, melt it. It will take just as long as to go around, and will be less stable.”

“I...“ As the initial rush of frustration faded, Fjord let out a rush of breath. “Yes. Okay. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Jester said. “We love him too. It super sucks to be here and not know how he’s doing. Or be able to heal him.” Her expression managed to look troubled even though she was forcing a smile.

“I—yes,” Fjord said, glancing at Beau. “I’m sorry for taking it out on you. I’ve been worrying about what Yasha said.”

“Don’t be a dick anymore,” Beau huffed. “Let’s go.”

The heaviness and growing sense that they were running out of time was only broken by one thought, rolling around like a loose ball bearing in Fjord’s head.

What had Beau meant by  _ we all know you love him? _

\---

Unsettled, Fjord walked beside Jester for the rest of the day. They talked aimlessly, avoiding the subject of time that was constantly slipping past. It wasn’t difficult to retrace their steps, but it just brought them back to where they started, and the ever-growing sense of futility blotted out the relief at seeing the sun.

“Like Sisyphus and the fucking boulder,” Beau muttered. They ate quietly, Caleb conjuring a thick seafood stew that seemed designed to please Fjord and Jester. The cats avoided Fjord too, as though Caleb had instructed them to--as though the typical bit of pleasure Caleb seemed to take in making him sneeze would have been too antagonistic today. Somehow, that annoyed Fjord more, but he didn’t say anything about it.

“Hi, Veth,” Jester said, casting Sending without warning midway through dinner. Fjord dropped his fork to hold up his fingers and count off for her. “We went into Aeor, but we have to find another way through. I’m sure we’ll get there tomorrow. How’s Caduceus doing? Miss you.”

“Okay,” Jester said, after a few moments of silence. “Veth says Caduceus is not doing any worse! Which is good. And that we should be careful and not get eaten by giant worms or freeze to death or anything.”

“So it has not gotten worse,” Caleb said. “This is a good thing.”

Fjord nodded. It should have been a relief, but the stew sat heavy in his stomach

Jester walked upstairs with an armful of cats. Fjord knew he should have followed her to check on her, but he wasn’t sure he’d have anything reassuring to say. When Beau rose from her seat, Fjord went up with her, but she stopped a floor early and slipped into Yasha’s room instead.

Her glare ordered him not to say anything. Fjord wouldn’t have, in any case. He went to his own room and tried to meditate, failed to clear his mind, and went to bed instead.

\---

The next day was better. The next day was a clear journey across the landscape to the other entrance, and a dark and slow descent. There was an incident with a giant spider that was better forgotten, except that Fjord was walking behind Caleb and had to watch him pick little bits of spider out of his hair and robes for the next hour.

The next day was better, because rather than an impassable collapse of refrozen snow and walls crumpled under the weight of the earth above or perhaps the damage of some old, half-forgotten impact, the path went on into the darkness. 

The next day was better because Beau led them into a lab with a shelf of golden vials, each one brimming with a milky white fluid.

“That’s it!” Beau called. “Those are--that’s the cure!”

Fjord whooped. Jester punched the air with her fist. Even Caleb smiled. Beau reached up and retrieved one, examining it. “This is it,” she said.

“How much do we need?” Fjord asked.

“Can’t we just take all of it?” Jester demanded.

“Perhaps if we bring this back, it can be replicated,” Caleb said. “Besides what we need to give to Mr. Clay.”

They stripped the shelves bare. Fjord put some in his pack. Caleb went for both his pack and his pockets. Jester shoved it everywhere: her pack, her pockets, her muff, in her hood next to Sprinkle, making sure every vial was carefully cushioned with extra bits of cloth.

“Everyone has some?” Beau asked. Then, “Good,” when they nodded.

They would take no chances; not with this.

“We have it,” Fjord said, reaching into his pocket and feeling the smooth cold glass. Some part of himself that had been in a constant state of tension, of  _ fear _ , released. They had the cure. He was holding in his fingers the thing that would save Caduceus.

“We have to go,” Caleb said.

“Let’s get out of here,” Fjord said. “Can we...” In the elation of having his hand on the cure, it had felt like this was over. But then he remembered, and his heart dropped to the pit of his stomach. “We can’t teleport out of here.”

“No, we cannot,” Caleb agreed bitterly. “So we must get moving, we must go back the way we came.”

“Alright,” Fjord said. “Let’s go.”

They went. It was dark by the time they emerged from the wreckage, white snow swirling through the night, and Caleb summoned the Tower without a word.

“I want breakfast for dinner,” Jester said. “Please, Caleb?”

“Ja, alright,” Caleb agreed. He waved a cat over. “Fiver, may we please have, ah, some waffles, and some bacon, and eggs, please.”

“And pancakes!” put in Jester.

“And pancakes,” Caleb agreed.

The conversation was far from silent that night. Fjord felt lighter; he let Jester stack up pancakes on his plate and dump syrup over them, and mock-glared at Caleb when he felt a cat brush against his ankles. They might have had a long journey left to go, but they had the cure. The path was clear, now. It felt like sighting land on the horizon in the light of the dawn after a storm broke.

“Hi, Yasha,” Jester said in her call that evening. “We found the cure! We’re on our way home. It will probably be a little bit still but we’re going--” she glanced at Fjord’s fingers and paused, mouthing silently. “So fast!”

“Nice one,” Beau said.

Jester beamed. “Yasha says that’s great! And that they are all doing okay and they miss us.” Her eyes glimmered. “Yasha misses you, Beau.”

“Yeah,” Beau said. “Yeah, okay.”

“Have you guys talked recently?” Jester asked.

“I mean, yeah, we talk all the time,” Beau said.

“Bea-au, you know what I mean!” Jester said, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively.

“Good pancakes, Caleb,” Beau said, completely ignoring her. “Thanks.”

“You are very welcome,” he said, turning back to Jester with a knowing grin. “Did Yasha say that she missed Beau in particular?”

“No, she said that she missed all of us,” Jester pouted. “But I could tell that she  _ definitely _ missed Beau.”

“I miss our friends very much,” Caleb said. “I will be very glad when we are back with them.”

“The Mighty Vier doesn’t have the same ring,” Beau agreed.

Caleb was the first to go upstairs. Jester followed when she yawned so hard she almost fell into her plate. She left Beau and Fjord there together, surrounded by cats who were busy tidying up and the remnants of the meal.

“Quite a day...” Fjord broke the silence between them.

“Yeah,” Beau sighed.

“Sorry about yesterday,” Fjord said. “I know that was--this was the better choice. The safer choice.”

“It’s cool,” Beau said. “I know you have some shit you have to deal with.”

“Yeah, about that,” Fjord began, “I wasn’t quite sure what you meant, there.”

“I’m just saying that, when we get back,” Beau replied as she swirled the remnants of her drink, “I think you and Cad have some things to talk out.” She dropped her fork with a clatter.

“What about you?” Fjord deflected swiftly. “What about Yasha? I don’t see you— _ talking it out. _ ”

“She gave me a letter,” Beau said, flatly. “She tried to write me a poem but it was—I mean it was a letter. About me.”

“Wow,” Fjord said. “And you told her—”

“Nothing!” Beau snapped. “I mean, we haven’t talked about it yet.”

“Oh,” Fjord said, puffing up, “And you have the nerve—”

“I have  _ time _ ,” Beau said, effectively cutting him off. The ‘ _ and you might not’  _ went unsaid.

“It’s not—it’s not like that,” Fjord said.

He fully expected her to say ‘sure’ or brush him off with a knowing look. “Yeah,” Beau said. “I know.”

“You—” Fjord stumbled. “What?”

“It’s not his jam, right?” Beau said. “Sex or...whatever. Don’t know if it’s yours...sometimes, maybe, right? But you’ve got...you care about him. He cares about you. And just because you don’t want to fuck him or—or marry him, or whatever. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t talk about it. Doesn’t mean you won’t regret it.”

“I don’t—” Fjord shook his head. “I won’t say you’re…  _ wrong _ . But he knows—I mean, I think I’ve told all of you...“

“Yeah,” Beau said. “Easy to say it to all of you.  _ I care about all of you _ ,” she did a poor imitation of Fjord’s accent.

“I don’t sound like that,” Fjord huffed.

She shot him a dirty look. “That’s not the point,” she said. “And _ sure _ . We all know we love each other. We all know we’re family. And what you want from Caduceus or what he wants from you… it’s not going to look like something out of one of Jester’s novels. Even if you take out the frankly  _ unrealistic _ sex.” She sighed and slumped forward over the table, nudging the syrup-sticky plate out of the way with her elbow. “But if we get back, and he’s  _ gone _ ...is there anything you’re gonna regret you never said to him?”

Fjord stared at his plate so he didn’t have to look her in the eye. The quarter-stack of pancakes that remained uneaten was listing sideways, the base of the pile soaked through with syrup and destabilizing it like a crumbling tower or melting column of snow.

Fjord thought about melting. Thought about freezing. Thought about never seeing Caduceus Clay again.

“Yeah,” he said. “There is.”

“Okay,” Beau said. “That’s all I wanted to know. Or wanted to make sure  _ you _ knew, at least.”

“Thank you,” Fjord said. “Really.” He paused for a moment, poking at the collapsing stack of pancakes. “So, a letter?”

“Yeah,” Beau’s mouth twisted into a self-deprecating grin. “She said all these—shit, all these  _ nice _ things about me? All these things she likes about me?”

Fjord snorted. “Yeah, she likes you.”

“No, like, details! Things  _ about me  _ that she’s noticed, all these things she’s…” Beau buried her face in her hands. She spoke through her fingers, words muffled. “It’s a lot.”

“You could write back to her,” Fjord suggested.

“Yeah I…” Beau scrubbed her hands down her face and sat up. “I thought about that, but then it was like, okay. She wrote  _ me _ a letter, and I had been like, she’s gotta make the first move, right? She knows I like her…she  _ knows  _ I like her, right?”

“I don’t know,” Fjord said, raising an eyebrow. “Did you tell her?”

“I—I’ve been pretty obvious about it!” Beau said.

“That doesn’t sound like what you were just saying to  _ me _ ...” Fjord pointed out with a sideways glance, taking a bite of soggy pancake.

“Okay, well—she could read between the lines, is what I’m saying. And she’s the one with the dead wife.”

“That is true,” Fjord agreed.

“But she wrote me a letter! That’s a move, right?”

“Why are you asking  _ me _ this?” Fjord sputtered. “I don’t know! I don’t know how _ I _ feel, how am I supposed to know how  _ Yasha _ feels?”

“I don’t know,” Beau groaned. “Shit’s complicated, man.”

“Yes,” Fjord agreed, standing. “Shit is.” He left Beau there at the table, patting her on the shoulder as he went by, and slept much better that night than the night before.

\---

It was six days back south with good weather. Then it would be a half- to a three-quarters-day sea voyage back to Palebank Village, from which they could safely teleport home. Seven days, and they would be home, and Caduceus would be safe. That felt good. That felt doable, survivable.

Fjord wholeheartedly believed that for four days, four days of trudging through snow, and storms, and fights with massive bizarre creatures that couldn’t leave well enough alone. Four days of shoveling down food and falling hard into bed, exhausted but satisfied with their progress.

On the fifth night, everything changed.

On the fifth night, Jester said, “Hi, Caduceus! We’re getting really close to being back. We’ll be home in like two more days! We miss you! Can’t wait to see you!”

Then she was silent.

Then her smile faded.

Then she said, “Caduceus?” in a very small voice, even though she’d run out of words and anyway the spell would have ended already.

“Jester?” Beau asked, apprehension coloring her tone. “What is it?”

“P-probably nothing,” Jester replied with forced cheer. “Except...he...didn’t say anything back?”

“He’s not always great with messages,” Beau said. “Maybe he missed it.”

“Call Veth,” Caleb said.

Jester’s fingers gripped the symbol of the Traveler. “Hi, Veth,” she said. “Everything’s good and we’re on our way, only I tried to call Caduceus and he didn’t answer so are things okay?”

Fjord was still holding up one finger, but she didn’t seem compelled to use the last word.

“Veth says—” Jester said, after an agonizing silence. “She says that Caduceus is asleep? That probably, he, um…it’s gotten worse and he’s…he’s not really waking up.”

The bottom dropped out of Fjord’s stomach.

“No,” Beau said, reflexively.

They stared at each other.

“It is one more day’s journey,” Caleb said. “If we rest, and we go...”

“One day to the coast,” Beau said. “Then the ship.”

“Two days to home,” Caleb said. “Do we...Jester, do we have two days?”

“I can call again?” she said.

“Don’t do it yet,” Fjord said. “We might need the spells.”

“We’re not gonna—” Beau stopped, catching Fjord’s determined gaze and realizing what he was thinking. “You don’t want to rest. You want us to keep going.”

“Eight hours to the coast,” Fjord said. “We get there at dawn, get on a ship. We’ll be back by tomorrow night.”

As he said it, he wondered if this was the tunnel all over again; if this was the fear, the creeping realization that he needed to say things and figure things out and most of all, he needed Caduceus, and it might be too late for any of it. If he was suggesting they take a terrible risk.

But then Beau said, “Shit. Let’s do it.”

“Maybe it is not so bad,” Caleb said. “Can we…how many spells do you have left?”

“I’ll Send another message,” Jester said. “Hi, Veth. How do—how bad is it? How much longer do we have? Please tell Caduceus we love him and we’re coming.”

Jester didn’t repeat any of Veth’s reply. She simply looked up at them, the hard set of her jawline damming back her tears, and said, “Let’s keep going.”

Without any further debate, they gathered coats and hats and weapons. Fjord’s muscles ached. His body reminded him as he buttoned his coat that they had been moving all day, that it was cold outside, that it was time to sleep. He ignored it all. He watched the others do the same, shrug off the exhaustion and the bruises and the memory of cold, and they plunged back out into the night together.

It was a risk. Even with his night vision, staring out into the dark snowy landscape was terrifying. Stepping out into the dark and cold with their magic and energy waning was a terrifying thought outweighed only by the fear of what might happen if they delayed even a moment longer.

They had done riskier things.

That was what Fjord told himself. They had jumped through the mouth of an astral dreadnought and lived to tell about it. They had been inches,  _ seconds _ from setting an ancient leviathan chained at the bottom of the sea loose upon the world. They had faced the servants of the Chained Oblivion and won. They had interceded in a war between the two biggest nations on the continent. They had risked the wrath of not-gods, demi-gods, and full, actual, celestial  _ gods _ all in the same weekend and lived to tell the tale! Compared to all of that, the consequences of failure here were almost small.

A single life. They took more lives than that through collateral damage, and that was when they  _ succeeded _ .

But of course it wasn’t that simple, because that life belonged to Caduceus.

Fjord couldn’t really imagine, even on the nights when his fears kept him from sleep, what it would be like if they’d freed Uk’otoa. If Obann had released Tharizdun. If the war had kept going. If they had failed in their battle against Vokodo. Bad things. Scary things. Terrible things that they should have stopped. But the eventualities that haunted him were shadowy and vague: the end of the world as he knew it,  _ maybe _ , but in a storybook sort of way.

But Fjord could imagine in excruciating detail what would happen if they failed now. He dreamed about it. Caduceus, frozen. Caduceus stiff and cold, turned to ice. Coming back too late and opening the door to the Xhorhouse to find Yasha and Veth with hate in their eyes. Or worse, with pity, with grief, but not anger. They wouldn’t be angry, not at their friends. Only Fjord would be angry. Just imagining it made him furious at himself. He was supposed to be a  _ champion _ . He was supposed to be the hand of the Wildmother, wielding her blade, protecting her lands and her creatures. Shielding her servants from harm. It was his duty as a paladin to save Caduceus, or else what was the point of him? 

What was the point of being a champion if he couldn’t save the people he loved?

He tripped over the word as soon as he thought it, but it was the right one.

Love. 

What a strange word. 

He still wondered, between Yasha and Beau’s heated glances and Jester’s romance novels and Veth and Yeza, what it really was supposed to look like. How he was supposed to feel. Attraction; that, he understood. Raw magnetism was easy. But love. Was this strange aching  _ love _ ? This desperation? This gaping impending sense of loss? Were the dreams  _ love _ ? Was it wanting to stay and be with Caduceus as he suffered and wanting to go and save him all at once, ripped in two by the impossibility of the choice? Was it the sword in his hand, made for him—one of the first things in the world truly made for him, for Fjord Stone, like he was special enough to need something like that—made for him as surely as a place was made for him with the Wildmother, with the Mighty Nein. 

Maybe love was simply belonging to something.

Fjord belonged to the Mighty Nein, and to the Wildmother. Those both felt like love.

And this creeping dread, the burden dragging on his soul every time he weighed what they might lose...

He didn’t know. But he thought he would like to belong to Caduceus. He thought he would like Caduceus to belong to him. To  _ him _ . Not just to this world, to the Wildmother, to life rather than to the Raven Queen and the world beyond, but to  _ him _ . He wanted Caduceus to stay. He wanted Caduceus to stay with him.

It felt stupidly simply, like that. Any idiot could have told him what that meant. Could have told him what they saw when he touched the symbol pinned to his chest or called out for Caduceus on the deck of the ship or held him still in that underwater tunnel or reached for him first as he bled in the dark.

Fjord felt like a fool. He felt stupid, and hopeful, and afraid. He had found it once and then again, found the best thing he’d ever had, the most love he’d ever had. The Tide’s Breath and Sabien and Vandren. The Mighty Nein and Caduceus.

He had lost it the first time.

He would not lose Caduceus.

“Hey,” Jester said quietly, her lilting voice breaking his train of thought as he trudged through the snow.

“Hey,” Fjord replied. “Is this a bad idea?”

Jester shook her head, the jewelry of her horns clinking sofly in the muffled world of a snow-covered plain. “This is going to save him,” Jester said. “It can’t be a bad idea.”

“I hope so,” Fjord sighed. He couldn’t say anything else around the lump in his throat.

Jester settled a hand on his arm. They fell into step behind Beau and Caleb, and the four pressed onwards into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you can, please leave a comment! They mean a lot.
> 
> I'm [catalists](http://catalists.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr or [@chromecatalists](https://twitter.com/chromecatalists/) on Twitter.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yasha, Caduceus, and Veth play checkers and other, higher stakes games.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks go again to [silverkleptofox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverkleptofox) for beta-reading.

When Jester called to say that they had found the cure, pure exuberance in her voice, a weight felt lifted off of Yasha’s shoulders. It put the outcome that had only been a vague hope—the outcome that meant they’d all come out of this alive—firmly into the realm of reality. No longer were they simply hoping to find something precious in a haunted, freezing landscape. It was in their grasp, and only a matter of time before they were home.

Caduceus smiled when they told him, but not as brightly as Yasha would have hoped. “One week!” Jester had said, and Yasha relayed it. Surely they could hold out another week.

She looked to the firbolg, waiting for… _ something _ …but he simply sipped at his tea in silence. Caduceus was always the first to offer words of comfort, even if those words were awkward and somewhat morbid, so long as they were  _ true. _ For him to say nothing whatsoever...

She _ hoped _ that they could hold out another week. 

They had two good days of clear weather, and they all spent most of their time out in the garden. Then it rained three days in a row. Caduceus didn’t say anything about it, but Yasha could tell his joints were aching that first drizzly morning based on how slowly he moved. After breakfast he retreated to the sofa and spent much of the day curled up under a stack of quilts. Yasha went upstairs and trained, punching the bag until her knuckles bled. Then she came back downstairs and paced the living room. Caduceus’ eyes flicked back and forth, watching her. Several times, she thought that he was on the verge of saying something, but he never seemed to fully gather the energy.

Veth popped in and out, seemingly searching for something, and eventually came back toting a heavy board. “I knew I’d seen this somewhere,” she said, setting it on the coffee table with a thud.

Yasha leaned in to look. It was a dark wood game board in checkered squares, some coffee-brown and some so dark that the wood looked black. Veth started setting out the pieces, half carved from the paler wood and half out of the deeper one. All of them were intricately made. Caduceus mustered the strength to lean forward and pick up a piece, drawing it close to examine the detail.

“That’s a castle,” Veth said.

“It looks like a tower,” Caduceus mused, looking at the little figure. It did look like a tower, with battlements all around the roof.

“It’s a castle,” Veth said. “That’s what it’s called. You haven’t played Dragonchess before, right?”

“No,” Caduceus said. “Why’s it—oh.” He’d caught sight of the little dark wood dragon that she picked up and placed in the center of the back line.

“There used to be a game just called chess,” Veth began to explain as she set more pieces on the board. “But there were kings instead of dragons, and they were weak and lame or something. Also, they couldn’t teleport to wherever their queen was.”

“I have never heard of either game before in my life,” Yasha said.

Veth blinked, nearly dropping a small carved horse. “Are you serious?”

“No,” Yasha smiled, picking up a matching wooden horse and gently bopping Veth with it. “I ‘got’ you.”

“Oh, good,” Veth sighed.

Yasha turned the carving over in her hand, worrying at the wooden surface. “I don’t know how to play, though,” she added.

“I’ll explain it,” Veth shrugged, placing the last few pieces.

She did, at great length. About three pieces in (“and these are the clerics, they can only move diagonally...”) Yasha zoned out. She looked at Caduceus, whose eyes had glazed over entirely.

“I think this game is too complicated,” Yasha said.

Veth sighed. “Well, there’s always checkers?”

Checkers proved to be manageable, because all the pieces moved the same way. Veth set Yasha and Caduceus playing each other, which Yasha thought was probably an attempt at mercy—every time she glanced at Veth she seemed to be actively restraining herself from saying anything. Yasha won two, and then Caduceus won one, and then he sat back in his nest of blankets.

“You two play,” he said softly as he wrapped a thick woven cover around his shoulders. “I’m just going to nap for a while.”

He dozed off to the sound of rain pattering against the dark window panes. Yasha and Veth played another two games, but as Yasha suspected, Veth was ruthless and entirely too good. The minimal enthusiasm they managed to muster was thoroughly dampened by Caduceus’ shivering beneath the pile of warm covers, and the cloud of worry that permeated the room.

Yasha wished there was something she could do to help, to alleviate her friend’s suffering, but caretaking was not something she had been taught or had a chance to practice in her tribe, whereas Veth... 

“Show me how to make soup,” Yasha asked, quietly. “Please.”

They made the thickest stew they could manage without meat. Yasha thought she had probably eaten less meat in the past week or so than in her entire life previously. Caduceus normally cooked with meat even though he didn’t eat it, which, now that Yasha was learning what cooking looked like, she realized was an incredible act of selflessness. Nearly every time they ate he made two meals, one which he couldn’t even taste. Just because the rest of them liked it.

But she and Veth certainly didn’t have the energy to cook two meals, and this was for Caduceus. So they made a vegetable broth and stirred in cream to thicken it and added potatoes and cheese and peas and some white root vegetables neither of them could identify but that tasted inoffensive. It smelled good; Caduceus limped in around the time they had set it to simmer.

“We made soup,” Yasha announced proudly. “Veth showed me how.”

Veth shrugged. “Yasha did most of the work.”

They ate there in the kitchen, not bothering to go to the dining room when the small table in the corner was enough for the three of them. The soup was warm and rich, and Caduceus perked up a little after almost finishing the bowl. Yasha stood and washed the dishes before Caduceus could think to try as the rain continued to fall, heavy on the window panes. 

“Do you know any other games?” Yasha asked as she set the last dish on the counter to dry. “Maybe a card game?”

“Sure,” Veth said. “Let’s play poker.”

It took a few hands to actually get a grasp on the rules, and they rapidly committed to playing only for buttons because they knew better than to risk their coin to Veth. Then Yasha discovered two things: one, Veth was an excellent card player and a terrible liar, which made her only mediocre at the game. Two, Caduceus was a terrible card player and had an incredible poker face—although Yasha suspected this was less a matter of deceptive skill and more a result of Caduceus not actually having any idea how well or poorly he was doing. That and perhaps a bit of growing up with so many siblings. This put him and Veth on a fairly even footing.

Yasha was terrible at  _ both _ , and lost repeatedly. Caduceus and Veth ended up with tidy piles of buttons by the end of the evening. She looked at the still-pouring rain through the window as Caduceus shifted his pile of buttons toward the center of the table, the tremor in his hand visible.

“Sleep inside with me,” Yasha said, half-afraid he’d try to go out to his tree despite the cold and the wet. “It’s raining.”

The firbolg looked to the ladder leading to his rooftop garden and sighed. “Alright.” He turned away from the passage to the roof and followed Yasha up the stairs to her room instead. Veth disappeared to do whatever she did in the library-cum-laboratory. 

When they reached the bedroom, Yasha was suddenly exhausted even though she knew Caduceus had to be far wearier. They settled together, rearranging blankets and pillows.

“Thank you,” she said, once the light was out.

“For what?” he yawned.

“For sleeping with me. I—wanted someone with me.”

“Of course,” he said.

“Do you mind it?”

“Mind what?”

“Me—asking this of you.”

“Not at all,” he said.

“I just meant...” Yasha began. “You said that you—what you said about the butcher. That you didn’t…”

“Oh,” Caduceus said. “Would you have—is this something you’d want from Beau?”

“Ah,” Yasha said. “Yes. No. I don’t know. It’s not—I’m not asking you like—I like women.”

“I know,” Caduceus chuckled.. “That’s—I do want this. Sleeping next to you, it’s nice. I don’t like being alone any more than you do.” He hesitated. “Maybe even less.”

“But you don’t…want…”

“I don’t want sex,” Caduceus shook his head. “I never have. It’s not—there’s nothing  _ wrong _ with it. It doesn’t bother me. I just never felt the appeal, never felt the need...I don’t think I want from anyone what you want from Beau. But…closeness is good.  _ Love _ is good. Maybe not the same kind. Not—romance. Something. Like family...yeah. It’s nice.”

Yasha nodded, fiddling with the weave of her blanket. “I’m sorry if I—what I said, about how Fjord felt...“

“It doesn’t bother me,” Caduceus said. “I would have to ask him, but I don’t—we may not want the same things from each other. But we might.”

“Why haven’t you asked him?”

She thought he was going to turn the question back on her. But then he replied, “He knows how I feel about relationships. But I’m not sure about him. So it seems—I don’t want to ask that of him, if it’s something that wouldn’t give him what he wanted or needed, if...he’s looking for...” he trailed off.

“You should just ask,” she said.

“I know,” he sighed.

“But you won’t.”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t want...Fjord is still figuring things out. And if there are other people who could give him— _ more _ —“

“What you want,” Yasha said, sharply. “Is not  _ less. _ ”

She heard him stir and turn his head towards her. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“You know that, right?” Yasha pressed, desperate to make sure he  _ knew _ . “This is not—it’s different. It’s not— _ less _ .”

“I know that,” he said, soft and tired. “I appreciate you saying it very much.”

Yasha nodded, and shifted into the blankets. “You’re welcome.”

She waited for him to say something else, but there was only silence, and then he began to snore. Yasha lay awake listening to it for a long time.

\---

It continued to rain, the next day. They spent most of it in the kitchen, cooking, almost by accident. Yasha made eggs and toast for breakfast, no longer requiring any direction. Caduceus slowly spread blackberry jam on his toast and ate it even slower. Had he eaten that little before? Was Yasha merely being hyper-vigilant now?

“Can you teach me to make something else?” she asked, as Veth swept the dishes out of Caduceus’s hand. He didn’t protest. Was that, too, a sign of how he felt, or had he just accepted the futility of it?

“Sure,” he agreed. “What?”

“One of those—tiny pies...?“ she made a meaningless gesture towards the pears in the bowl on the counter. 

“A fruit tart?” Veth supplied, and Yasha nodded.“What kind?” she asked from the basin.

“I don’t know,” Yasha said. “I think we only have pears.”

“Ooh,” Veth said. “We would make tarte tatin!”

“I don’t know what that is,” Caduceus said.

“Pears and caramel,” she explained, already pulling the pears to the basin to wash. “It’s good.”

“I don’t know how to make caramel,” Caduceus said.

“I do,” Veth said.

“Really?” Yasha couldn’t help herself.

“It’s just chemistry,” Veth smirked. “And I  _ was _ a housewife.”

Veth was both a better and worse teacher than Caduceus: she wouldn’t take over for Yasha when she began to panic, but she wasn’t as good at explaining things. She also forced Yasha to do everything on her own, which was horrible when the sugar burned during attempts one and two, and wonderful when it turned to dark amber caramel on the third try. “Oh,” she said with soft wonder. “I made that.”

“Yeah,” Veth patted Yasha’s thigh, as high as she could reach. “You did.”

Caduceus showed her how to peel and slice the pears vertically and scoop out the core, and he kneaded the dough for her during the tough-love caramel-making lessons. The dough rested while the pears went into the oven to bake, and they played button-poker at the table while the burnt smell slowly dissipated and was replaced by the scent of sweet fruit baking.

It was lunchtime by the time the pears came out of the oven, and so they made sandwiches and then went back to it. The dough was just about ready by then, and they laid out the pears over the caramel and rolled out the dough over the top. The whole saucepan went into the oven, and they waited for it to bake and played more cards and drank tea, Caduceus half-dozing at the table, enjoying each other’s company.

There was something strange and liminal about time that afternoon; it seemed to drip by slowly, like caramel from a spoon, until suddenly all at once it was hours later and time to take the tart out of the oven. It turned out perfectly and sat there on the countertop, shining and golden. Yasha kept sneaking glances at it as they made an easy dinner of roasted vegetables and thick-sliced bread, leaving the tart for dessert.

Finally the dinner plates were washed and a still-warm slice of tarte tatin sat steaming on her plate. It parted against the side of her fork and Yasha scooped it up—caramel and pear and golden shell. In her mouth it was rich and sweet and buttery. “It’s good,” Yasha said, unable to keep the surprise from her voice.

“Mhmm!” Veth mumbled, her mouth full.

“I made—something  _ good _ ,” Yasha said.

“You make good things every day,” Caduceus said with a smile.

“You’re getting good at the cooking thing,” Veth agreed, but when Yasha looked at Caduceus, she knew he hadn’t only meant the food.

Without talking about it, they went upstairs together again that night. “That was a good day,” Yasha said, into the darkness.

“Yeah,” Caduceus agreed.

“Thank you,” she said. “For—teaching me. And everything.”

“Thank you for caring for me,” he answered. “Thank you for your kindness, and patience. You are doing good, in this world. Not only for me.”

“You are too,” she said. “I think you taught me how.”

\---

On the third rainy morning, Caduceus couldn’t get out of bed. He tried; Yasha watched him sit up and swing his legs over the side of the bed and push himself to his feet. She also watched, almost in slow-motion, as his knees gave out—she was flying forward in seconds and caught him, holding him upright.

“Oh,” Caduceus said. “That’s…that’s not good.”

She lowered him carefully back down on the bed. “Was that—what was that?”

“I—“ Caduceus hesitated. The hope that it was a brief dizzy spell vanished the longer he took to answer. “I don’t think I can stand up.”

“Okay,” Yasha said, quickly running this new development through her head and trying to think of what to do next. “How about you get back in bed, and I will bring you some food. Okay?”

“Okay,” he agreed, swinging his legs back up onto the mattress. She carefully tucked the blankets back around him and went to find Veth. 

She was still asleep.

“What?” she yawned as Yasha gently shook her shoulder.

“Caduceus can’t stand up,” Yasha blurted. “I…yes. I wanted you to know.”

Veth sat up in bed and looked to Yasha, her gaze steely. “Fuck.”

“Yes,” Yasha said. “I am going to make him some tea and oatmeal and probably cry a lot.”

“They’re going to be back,” Veth said, words going unsaid and unneeded between the two women. They both understood the ramifications. “Any day now.”

“Yes,” Yasha said. “Can you go sit with him after you get up?”

“Yeah.”

So Yasha went downstairs. She put the kettle on, and then set the oats boiling. She stared at the steam and thought ‘ _ Caduceus is dying’  _ and then the tears started. She cried all the way through the porridge puffing up, and through stirring raisins into it, and arranging it on a tray with the tea and a little cup of honey.

She dried her eyes as she climbed the stairs to her room. Her room, where Caduceus had spent the last two nights freezing despite being curled beneath the blankets next to her own large, warm frame. Had it not been enough? She pushed down the shame and frustration and opened the door.

When she stepped inside, Veth was perched on the edge of the bed frame, braiding Caduceus’ hair. “There.” She knotted the tie around it and lifted the braid off his neck. “That’s better.”

“Thank you,” he said softly, barely a whisper.

“I have food,” Yasha said. “And tea.”

She sat with him while he ate. Veth came up with a bowl of oatmeal for Yasha, and then slipped back downstairs. Even though she’d started later, Yasha had scraped her bowl clean long before Caduceus stopped picking at his. Eventually he set it aside, and Yasha let him even though she wanted to urge him to try and eat more.

“I want to ask something of you,” Caduceus broke the silence between them.

“Anything,” Yasha said. She didn’t say it flippantly; she would have done anything he asked, just then.

“If I die,” Caduceus began, “I’d like you to bring my body to the Grove, please.”

“Of course,” she said. Her heart ached. “I’ve never seen it, you know.”

“That’s right.” He smiled, a look of fondness in his eyes. “You’ll like it. Lots of flowers. A little bit overgrown, by now—or, no, they’ve probably tidied it back up. They’re the right number of people to tend it.” He sighed. “I did what I could.”

“You took good care of it,” Yasha said. Her hand, without her even realizing it, drifted to his hair and she began petting it, running her fingertips along the neat little ridges of Veth’s braid. He leaned into it. She realized as she said it that, having just admitted that she’d never seen the Blooming Grove, she had no grounds on which to comfort him. But she knew in her heart that he  _ had  _ taken good care of it, because that was what Caduceus always did. He took good care of things.

“I tried,” he said. “It was—it was home.”

“Is it still home?”

“Now? ...yes. I think so...” he said. “ _ A _ home, anyway.”

“You have a home with us, too,” she said. “You know that.”

“I know that,” he agreed. “The thing about it is… well, it was always _home_. But home isn’t just a place. I used to—or, I don’t know if I used to think that home was a place, but when I thought about home, I thought about the Grove.”

“And what do you think now?” she asked. It wasn’t really a question; she didn’t know where Caduceus was going with it or if he was just speaking aloud.

“I think it stopped feeling like home,” he said. “By the time you all came. I—thought it was the blight, but now I don’t think that was it. Or not  _ just _ that.”

“No?”

“No,” Caduceus said. “I think it was that I felt alone.”

“You’re not alone here,” Yasha said.

“I know,” Caduceus said. “A home is…it can be a place, but not just a place. It’s a people, too. And I’m relieved to…I’m very glad we’ve saved the Grove. But to know that a home can be people…can be just people? I am less afraid of the blight.”

“You would have lost your home,” Yasha said. Her heart ached for him; Caduceus, who valued his home so highly, so terrified of losing it. And she knew what it was like, to lose a home. To have a home be in a person, and to lose her.

“Yes,” Caduceus says. “I think I…well. I hope we have saved it. But a part of me realized—it wasn’t sprouting the crystals that made me feel I had succeeded.”

“It was your family,” Yasha said.

“Yes,” Caduceus said. “Perhaps that’s not very...dutiful.”

“Caduceus,” Yasha said. “I think you’re very dutiful. Maybe you should worry about being something else.”

“Like what?”

“Happy.”

“I’m happy,” he promised. “Thank you. I feel—better knowing that if this doesn’t work out, you’ll take my body home.”

“Yes,” Yasha said. “Of course.”

“I’ll probably be a little unwieldy…oh, no.” He sat up. “Aren’t I going to turn to ice?”

“What?”

“If I die of this,” Caduceus explained, “I’ll turn to ice.”

“Oh,” Yasha said. That was an alarming image. “Like—you become an ice sculpture? Or you freeze?”

“I thought it was actually—ice.”

“Oh,” Yasha said. The idea was deeply discomfiting. Even the idea of Caduceus’s body was better than the idea of him as a literal freezing sculpture. The idea of his soft fur turning hard and cold…but she was meant to be reassuring him. “You can bury ice.”

“I’ll melt,” Caduceus said. “Before I get home.”

“Caleb will put you in his…that little amber box,” Yasha reassured him.

“Oh, yeah,” Caduceus slumped back against the pillows again. “That’s good. Thank you.”

“We’ll find plants that like a lot of water,” Yasha offered, petting his hair again. “And deep roots.”

He nods. “Irises would be nice. To start at least. Yeah...I guess it’ll...feed the earth, anyway.”

“Yes,” she said. “I bet you’ll make good tea.”

“I hope so,” he laughed softly.

“And whatever grows, I will take some flowers and put them in my book for Zuala,” she said. “So you can meet each other. You would have liked each other.”

“I’ll look for her,” Caduceus promised. He was falling asleep again, eyes slipping shut. “I’ll tell her you say hello.”

“Tell her I love her,” she said. “And that you took very good care of me. Of all of us.”

He smiled, and was asleep again only moments later. Yasha tore her eyes from his face and looked up to see Veth in the doorway.

“They haven’t called today,” she said. “Could be on their way back.”

“I think we have a little longer,” Yasha said. She carefully rearranged his hair to get it out of his face and went back to stroking it gently. “But he is asleep again. He has been very tired.”

“Is that how it... goes?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“What were you talking about?”

“He wanted us to bring his body back to the Blooming Grove,” she said.

“He’s not going to die,” Veth said. “Did you tell him that?”

“I told him we would,” she said.

“He’s not going to die!” the halfling spat, her fists clenched at her sides.

“But if he did,” Yasha said softly stroking the soft fur at Caduceus’ hairline, “We would bring him home.”

Veth looked at her and then sighed, the combativeness slipping from her features. “Yeah,” she said. “We would.”

\---

Usually after sleeping for so long, Caduceus seemed to feel better, but the next time he opened his eyes he was worse than before. He moved slowly, with little strength and even less coherency. He ate almost nothing of the soup she tried to feed him, and she had to help him hold the teacup steady as he shivered under the blankets.

“Do you think if we keep you very warm, that will help slow it down?” Yasha said, and then felt silly.

“I don’t know,” Caduceus said, although the answer was obviously ‘no’ and he clearly knew it. “It’s worth a try.” 

He was already covered in triple-stacked blankets, the comforter up to his chin. Yasha slipped underneath the pile, careful not to let more of the warm air escape than absolutely necessary. “I’m going to put my arms around you,” she said. He only blinked sleepily at her and didn’t object. She slipped her large arms around his chest and pulled him against her chest.

Once she was holding him, she felt him relax into her, pressing against the warmth. “That’s nice.” He blinked slower, eyes shut longer. Up close, she could see the blue snaking through every vein on his face.

An impulse struck her. “This will only last a minute,” she warned, and then closed her eyes and manifested her wings. They appeared in a sudden rush of air and she drew them forward, draping the soft feathers over him like a swan shielding its children. The many layers of feathers trapped the heat within, and the warmth running through the wings themselves only added to the circle of comfort.

“Oh,” Caduceus let out a little sigh.

“I’ve got you,” she promised, cradling him in her arms, her wings, trying to impart some of that warmth into him. “I’ve got you and I’m not going anywhere.”

“I might,” he admitted, softly.

“I know,” she said. “It’s okay. You have been very strong for us. I’ve got you now.”

Her wings faded after a minute, but he was asleep before then, cold in her grasp, the rise and fall of his chest the only proof she had that he was still a living thing.

\---

He didn’t wake again. 

She waited, and waited, and as it crept towards evening she tried to wake him, and couldn’t rouse him. She called for Veth, hoping against hope that the shout would make him open his eyes, but it didn’t, and she relayed this to Veth in a whisper she didn’t need to use.

“Shit,” Veth said. “When they call tonight…”

“I don’t think they can hurry anymore,” Yasha said.

“I’m going to tell them to hurry anyway.”

“They said it would be two more days.”

“We don’t have two more days!” Veth snapped.

“I know,” said Yasha.

Veth brought Yasha dinner, and a mug of tea for Caduceus, as though he might wake and drink it. They knew better, but Yasha still imagined that he might. Veth looked embarrassed about it and finally said, “I thought he might…smell it.”

“That’s nice,” Yasha said. “That’s a nice thought.”

Veth left after that. She couldn’t seem to bear to be in the room with Caduceus. Caduceus, who was dying. He’d been dying this whole time, really. It felt as though he was fading more quickly now, but Yasha knew that probably wasn’t true. He was probably dying at the same rate he had been since the spores infected him. It was merely that they were reaching the end of the road, and Caduceus had been too polite to complain until he couldn’t hide it anymore.

Veth may not have been able to watch, but Yasha couldn’t look away. Every breath mattered. Every moment mattered. If this was the last time she had with Caduceus, she would not waste a second of it. Not again. 

“You are not alone,” she promised him, and held his freezing hand in hers, and waited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some liner notes on this one:  
> -A Dragonchess Set is a real D&D item that is an option for (iirc) the Noble background starter items. All Dragonchess rules are made the fuck up.  
> -Tarte tatin is a real thing, and mostly accurately described here not thanks to my own cooking ability but rather to [Claire Saffitz](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiQR-F5wqvk/).
> 
> If you can, please leave a comment! They mean a lot.
> 
> I'm [catalists](http://catalists.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr or [@chromecatalists](https://twitter.com/chromecatalists/) on Twitter.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Several homecomings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eternal thanks to my wonderful, wonderful beta reader [silverkleptofox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverkleptofox). You're the best.
> 
> It's Aro Awareness week, so let's pretend this timing was completely intentional and not the result of intense procrastination! Thanks for sticking with me.

Veth came upstairs one more time an hour past full dark. She stood in the doorway and said nothing until Yasha raised her head to meet her gaze. “Anything?”

“They’re on their way,” Veth said, grimly, but Yasha could hear what Veth wouldn’t put into words: they were still too far. “How is he?”

“Sleeping,” Yasha said. She still couldn’t wake Caduceus, but couldn’t bring herself to use a word harsher than sleep. To say that he had gone beyond that to something deeper, something beyond the world of the living—it felt like admitting that it was over.

Veth nodded. She came in then, stopping at the side of the bed, and stood there a long while looking at Caduceus’s face. Standing on tiptoe, she pressed a careful kiss to his hairline. She stood back for a second, watching him breathe, in, out. Then she spun on her heel and was gone.

Yasha let out a long, shuddering breath in the ensuing absence. She watched Caduceus breathe, and then she began to pray. She began by praying to the Stormlord; familiar prayers. Prayers for strength. Prayers that she might be guided. Prayers that he might give her the ability to shield those she loved. But what did the Stormlord know about disease? What did he know about Caduceus?

So she began to pray to the Wildmother. There were no easy words for it, and though she had heard Caduceus pray many times, in that moment the words refused to come. So Yasha simply whispered into the air whatever came to mind.

“Wildmother, Caduceus needs you,” she said. “And we need him. Please help him. Please keep him with us.” The words felt insubstantial, evaporating into the air as soon as they left her lips. But she knew, somehow, that praying was the only thing left to do, and so she kept praying until she fell asleep with the word  _ please _ on her tongue.

She looked up, and sunlight was shining through the branches of Caduceus’s tree. Yasha stared upwards, bewildered; the shadows of the leaves dappled her face impossibly, illuminated from above rather than the lanterns hanging below, although the lanterns remained—they were merely swallowed up by the greater light.

“Yasha,” a woman’s voice said. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

When Yasha looked, she thought the woman was a half-orc; her skin was pale green and she was huge, taller than Yasha. But her features weren’t orcish at all—she looked, if anything, elven. She had tangled dark brown curls, laden with flowers and leaves and, Yasha realized after a moment, insects—a blue butterfly rested on a loop of hair, a mantis sat on her ear, washing its face. Her ear was curved like a human’s. Something in her cheekbones reminded Yasha of Caduceus’s face—perhaps she was some other sort of giantkin? But when Yasha blinked, in the second her eyes were closed, beyond her green skin and curls, she couldn’t have ascribed any solid features to the woman whatsoever.

“Hello,” Yasha said. “Are you...you’re Caduceus’s—you’re the Wildmother!”

“Yes,” she said simply.

“It’s not sunny in Rosohna,” Yasha stated plainly. “So this is a dream.”

“It  _ is _ a dream,” the Wildmother nodded. “But not of Rosohna. This is the Birthheart.”

Yasha looked again. The branches above her were far more sprawling than she’d initially realized; the tree was massive, twenty or thirty times the size of Caduceus’s tree. It could have housed a village. “Oh,” she said.

“What would you ask of me?” Melora asked. Her voice was like the wind through the branches in the minutes before a storm.

“I didn’t think you would answer me,” Yasha admitted. “I don’t...I know you talk to Caduceus. Sort of. And Fjord.”

“I do,” she said. “But I hear many prayers, not just the prayers of those who have pledged to follow me.”

“Can you—help him? Bring him back to us?”

The Wildmother’s face turned downward, something akin to lilies wilting at the end of summer. “No,” she said. “I am afraid this is beyond my power to heal.” Her expression hardened. “What grows inside of him was made to be untouchable by the gods. It should not  _ be _ .” The way she said it— _ it should not be _ —felt like a judgment. An unnatural thing to be stricken from the earth.

“Or...maybe you could talk to him?” Yasha said. “Get him to wake up?” Her voice sounded strange and childlike to her own ears.

“I’m afraid not,” the Wildmother said. “He can’t hear me at all. He’s very far gone.” Her expression seemed despondent, and though Yasha’s first instinct was to reach for her anger, she couldn’t be angry at the Wildmother. Yasha’s own grief was reflected in the goddess’s face, or maybe something worse—the despair of a mother about to lose a child.

“Then—“ Yasha began. Broke off. “Then what do I do?”

“Stay with him. He’s holding on to  _ you _ ,” she said, gently. “You may yet hold him here.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Yasha said, plaintively. “I can’t do anything.”

“Aren’t you?” the Wildmother asked. “Tell me, child of Kord. What if you were in a storm? In a very heavy storm, when the rain is falling so hard you cannot see and the thunder and lightning are upon you and the wind is against you. What could compel you to keep going? What tethers you to this world? For what do you fight?”

“My friends,” Yasha said, immediately. “The Stormlord, too,” she added, after a moment, unsure if she should be ashamed it didn’t come first or if she should have admitted that to a god.

But the Wildmother didn’t seem angry; on the contrary, she was smiling. “What might compel you,” she said, “Compels him now. Compels my Stone and your friends to walk through the night and the cold to return to you, and compels my Clay to fight against the cold within him when it would be easier to let go.”

“He is...he believes in you,” Yasha said, feeling compelled to defend him. “He’s a good cleric.”

“A very good cleric,” the Wildmother agreed. “My Clay is faithful to me. But living is not an act of faith, Yasha. Living is an act of  _ love _ .”

Yasha opened her mouth, but she didn’t have anything to say. For someone like Caduceus, living  _ was _ an act of love. She thought she’d started to understand Caduceus a little better—understand why he could be so calm in the face of death, why knowing how close they were to the end of things did not frighten him. All things ended—Caduceus had faith in that very fact, in the idea that he would go into the arms of the Wildmother and into the earth. Faith was acceptance of the inevitable and peace in that acceptance.

Living—living did not take that sort of faith. It took courage, and determination, the willingness to push onward in the unknown and uncertain. If Caduceus lived, it wasn’t because he believed that the Wildmother demanded it. He breathed because Yasha desperately wished him to, because Veth demanded he not give up, because he had promised them all that he would be there when they returned—and because there were things he and Fjord still needed to say to each other.

“I’ll take good care of him,” Yasha said. “And...when it comes time, you will too, right?”

“You have,” she said gently. “And I will.” Her smile was like warm sunlight cresting over a hilltop in the morning. 

“But not yet,” Yasha told her. “Not yet.”

“Not yet,” the Wildmother said. Yasha must have slept more after that, but she couldn’t remember any other dreams.

When she woke, it was dim outside the windows and it took Yasha a moment to realize that it was indeed what passed for dawn in Rosohna. There was a low rumbling, and Yasha thought blearily of thunder before she realized it was Caduceus, snoring.

She burst into happy tears.

“What—?” Veth said. Yasha hadn’t noticed her—hadn’t realized that she’d come into the room and taken up a watch on the chair beside the bed at some point during the night, and had apparently fallen asleep because Yasha managed to startle her awake.

“He’s still...he’s alive,” Yasha gasped, wiping at her face.

“Well, yeah,” said Veth, with a stubborn bravado that Yasha knew she didn’t really feel. “He’s strong, our Mr. Clay.”

Yasha reached over and brushed his hair out of his face. His skin was so, so cold. She couldn’t suppress a shudder. “A little longer,” she said. “Just a little longer.”

Neither she nor Veth moved for another hour. Eventually Veth got up and left, patting Yasha on the arm on her way out. Yasha could hear her moving through the house in a muffled sort of way. She let every sound besides Caduceus’s breathing fade into background noise. Finally she got out of the bed, sliding out carefully under the edge of the quilt to keep as much warm air trapped as she could. She took Veth’s place in the chair and waited.

Someone had to keep vigil, after all.

Veth came back some indeterminate time later. The world felt strange and liminal, even more than it usually did in the eternal dusk. She brought Yasha tea. She’d changed clothes and brushed her hair. Yasha should have done the same—she was still in her clothes from the day before, and her hair was a tangled wreckage—but she couldn’t bring herself to move.

“I’m going to make lunch,” Veth said, eventually. “Do you want anything?”

The thought of eating made Yasha’s stomach turn. She shook her head. Veth didn’t press her; she just got up and went out. A moment later, there was a crash.

“Everything okay?” Yasha shouted.

“Not me!” Veth yelled back.

“We’re home!” Jester’s voice shrieked. “We have it.”

Yasha shot to her feet. She was torn between running downstairs immediately and staying by Caduceus’s side. In the few moments it took her to make a choice, it became a moot point—the others were up the stairs and streaming into the bedroom.

They looked  _ awful.  _ They reeked of wet furs and sweat, monster guts and sea salt. The dark circles under Beau’s eyes were so pronounced that for a moment Yasha thought she had been punched in the face multiple times. Caleb swayed and clutched at the doorframe. Snot was dripping down Jester’s face. Fjord’s exhaustion was the least prevalent, but anyone who knew him could see the trembling of his muscles, the weariness in the lines on his face. It was merely that the weariness was overwritten by fear. His eyes were locked on Caduceus’s face.

“He’s alive,” Yasha said. “See.” She took Fjord’s hand and pressed it to Caduceus’s chest so he could feel the shallow rise and fall.

“He’s so cold,” Fjord said.

“We’ve got the cure,” Jester said, and produced a vial of milky-white fluid from her muff. “I think he needs to drink it.”

“Sit him up,” Veth ordered. “We don’t want him to choke on it.”

“We do not,” Caleb confirmed, breathless.

This was not Yasha’s area of expertise. She stumbled back, surprised by her own exhaustion when she hadn’t really done anything in the past day. In fact, she had slept quite a lot. But somehow, it didn’t seem to have helped, as if the hours she had spent dreaming had been just as real and taxing as the hours she had spent awake.

So she stood and watched as Fjord lifted Caduceus up at Jester’s instructions, one arm slung low around his back, bringing his still form into a sitting position. Jester fed him the vial, one-quarter at a time, Veth making sure he swallowed it. Then the vial was empty, and they were all standing there, the room full of too many bodies, half of them cold and filthy, all of them strung out on exhaustion and terror and hope.

“Is that it?” It took Yasha a moment to realize she was the one who had spoken.

“That’s it,” Beau confirmed.

There was another silence. “Fuck,” Veth said, and she bolted out the door.

“I will...one moment,” Caleb said. He turned back to the bed, patted Caduceus’s arm, and muttered something in Zemnian. Then he went after Veth.

“Hey,” Beau said.

“Hey,” Yasha responded. “You look—“ she paused. “Like you could use some sleep,” she said tactfully.

“I look like shit,” Beau said. “You look—“

“I also look like shit,” Yasha agreed. She stole a glance back at Caduceus.

“I am going to sit here for a little while,” Jester said. “To make sure everything is good and that he doesn’t need any more antidote. If you guys want to go talk or take a bath or something?”

“I’m staying too,” said Fjord, his arms still around the frozen firbolg.

“Alright,” Beau said. “Want to go get in the hot tub?”

“I...“ Yasha felt oddly unmoored. In the course of five minutes, everything she’d been hanging hope on had been realized; the faint tether of belief that had kept her willing them all to make it through this had become unnecessary. She was on solid ground again, but it still roiled beneath her feet.

Part of her still felt like she couldn’t leave or something terrible would happen. But it wouldn’t. Jester had moved to stand on the other side of the bed, stripping off her furs into a smelly heap on the floor. Fjord had taken up an uneasy sentry in the chair at the bedside. His hand was resting on the mattress, inches from Caduceus’s hand, as though he couldn’t quite bring himself to take it. Neither of them would let anything happen—in fact, if something did go wrong and Yasha was sitting by, she would have yelled for their help anyway.

So she said, “Yes, that sounds really good, actually.” She hesitated still.

“I’ll go get it running,” Beau said, patting her on the shoulder on the way out the door.

Yasha hesitated once more. Then she stepped next to Fjord—who jerked his hand back as if he’d been caught doing something unsavory.

“You should hold his hand,” Yasha said. “I think he would like that.”

Fjord gave her a look, and then reached out and took Caduceus’s hand. “We need to have a conversation,” Fjord said. “He and I.”

“Yes,” Yasha agreed.

“But…”

“He will like it,” Yasha said. “It will help him know he is loved. And I think he is very loved.”

“Yeah,” Fjord said. His voice cracked. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Jester agreed. She’d finished wriggling out of her layers and was watching.

“Thank you,” Fjord said. “For taking care of him. I don’t know if I...could have done that. I think I would have gone mad just...waiting.”

There had certainly been something appealing in the idea of going out and looking for the cure. And Fjord was right, that the idea of doing something, anything, had been more appealing every day she waited, every day Caduceus grew worse and she could do nothing.

She looked at Caduceus’s face. He looked peaceful. The stark contrast of his veins seemed to soften—the blue was fading. And his chest rose and fell in a more regular rhythm. The soft rumble of his breath was starting to become audible.

“I didn’t think I could have, either,” Yasha said truthfully. “But I wanted to learn.” She reached out and touched Caduceus’s cheek, startled and then relieved to discover it was still cool, but beginning to resemble the temperature of living flesh.

“I’m here if you need anything,” she said, startled too to realize that felt  _ true _ . If they needed something—needed not a sword or a thrown punch, but care or kindness or food or  _ something _ , she could give it to them.

“Thanks, Yasha,” said Jester. She had perched on the bedside table, her eyes flickering between the three of them.

“Thank you,” Fjord repeated. He was looking at Caduceus.

Yasha smiled, and went to go find Beau.

\---

When Fjord woke, his back was aching. He let out a low grunt of protest as the act of lifting his head pulled at his neck, cramped from sleeping upright in a chair. Stupid thing to do, why would he—

“Feeling alright?” Caduceus asked.

“You’re awake,” Fjord said, stupidly.

“Seems like it,” Caduceus agreed. He was still lying flat on the bed, cheek turned into the pillow so he was looking at Fjord. Fjord suddenly got the impression that he’d been awake for some time now and had simply been waiting for Fjord to join him. At some point, Jester must have left, since they were alone.

“You could have woken me,” Fjord said.

Caduceus shrugged. “You looked like you could use the rest.”

“You don’t get to tell me I look like shit when you’re the one on your deathbed,” Fjord said.

Caduceus grinned. “I didn’t say you looked like shit. I just said you looked like you hadn’t slept in a while.”

“Well, I heard you’ve been sleeping enough for the rest of us,” Fjord scowled.

“Have I?” Caduceus asked.

“About a day and a half now,” Fjord sighed. It was hard to tell what time it was in the eternal night of Rosohna, but after a moment of stretching his neck had stopped trying to kill him, so he couldn’t have been sleeping for much longer than a few hours.

“Oh,” Caduceus said. “That’s...huh.”

Fjord wondered if Caduceus knew how close they’d come to losing him. “You’re back with us,” he said. He reached out and took Caduceus’s hand again, wondering when his grip had loosened.

Caduceus reached back, this time. His fingers were long and thin, his palm matching Fjord’s in size but somehow able to fold all the way over the back of his hand so his fingertips rested on Fjord’s wrist. “I didn’t go anywhere.”

“Then I’m back with you,” Fjord allowed, only because he didn’t want to dwell on just how close they had come to Caduceus’s words being a lie.

“So you are,” Caduceus smiled, the half of his face unburied in the pillow lighting up with it. “Help me sit up?”

Fjord had to release Caduceus’s hand so that he could stand up. Their fingers had only been linked for a few moments, so it was absurd to think that he missed the feeling of Caduceus’s hand in his, but it was still something of a relief when Caduceus reached back out so that Fjord could grip him by the forearms and pull him into an upright position.

“Alright there?” Fjord checked, when Caduceus stilled after Fjord let go.

He nodded. “Just a little dizzy.”

“Let me get you tea,” Fjord offered, standing up.

“Thanks,” Caduceus said. “But actually I wouldn’t mind talking to you first.”

“Okay,” Fjord said. He wet his lips. “We do have a lot to talk about, don’t we?”

“Seems like it,” Caduceus agreed. He had a terrible calm about him, which normally Fjord appreciated very much, but was driving him a little crazy in the moment. He felt like he was about to vibrate out of his skin and Caduceus looked like he was about to suggest a menu for breakfast.

“It has been brought to my attention,” Fjord said, after a moment of silence made it clear Caduceus wasn’t going to keep going. “That I might...I care about you very much.” That wasn’t what Fjord had meant to say; it lacked the gravitas that it had in his head. “I have feelings for you.”

Caduceus nodded. It took him a moment to pull together words; he did look a little uncertain now. “You know I…”

“I don’t…” Fjord shook his head. “I don’t want—“ he cut himself off. What did Fjord want? Say it plainly. “You mean a great deal to me. When I was in this...really,  _ really  _ dark place, you pulled me out. You’re just this...light. You have been a light. I want to be with you. I want you to be a part of my life forever. I don’t want to lose you. I don’t need anything to change,” he added, quickly. “We can stay just like this. I just, it feels important for you to know that you are important to me.”

Caduceus blinked. There was something like relief in his expression. “In that case, I feel the same way. I love you very much.”

“But not romantically,” Fjord checked.

“Well,” Caduceus said. “If you can tell me what that means, I can answer.”

Fjord opened his mouth, and then shut it. He worried his upper lip on the tip of his tusk. “It’s...well.”

“I don’t want to have sex with you,” Caduceus said, calmly, as if no one in his life had ever shamed him for mentioning such a thing. “Nothing personal, I don’t want that with anyone. Beyond that...I want you to be a part of my life, Fjord. Not just for now, but for the rest of it. You are my family. I don’t need to spend every day with you, or every year. Life is long and we have a lot to do, maybe not all of it together. But I want to know that we’ll come back together eventually. I want to live with you for as long as we can, and I want to bury you.” His tone was very measured, but there was a strange brightness to his eyes.

“That is...if there’s some other sort of love, I don’t know it. That’s all I have.” Caduceus spread his hands. “I love you like that. I don’t know what the word for it is.”

“I don’t know the word for it either,” Fjord said, after a long pause. The words that came to mind were  _ devotion  _ or maybe  _ grace _ , all things that felt like worship. This wasn’t that, although Fjord thought parts of it might have been tied up in it. This was love, whatever love was, however it lived in the body. “But if that’s what love is, I love you as well.”

“And you know there are things I can’t give you,” Caduceus said.

“I want what you want,” Fjord said, honestly. “Whatever you want to give me.” If Caduceus  _ had  _ wanted it, Fjord thought he would have slept with him. It was hard to know. He wanted to be with Caduceus. “I feel like we should...do something.”

“Like what?”

Fjord considered asking to kiss him, but it didn’t feel right, even if he thought Caduceus might not mind it. He held out his hand, palm up and open.

Caduceus put his hand in it, and Fjord twisted their fingers together and didn’t let go. It felt good. Warm. “You’re warming back up.”

“Yeah,” Caduceus said. “I feel a lot better. The last couple days it was just...cold.”

Fjord remembered the stillness, the pallor, and the terrible iciness of his skin when they’d first gotten back, and suppressed a shudder. Involuntarily, his fingers tightened. “Do you want something to eat?” he offered. “Or that tea?”

“Yeah,” Caduceus said. “But not just yet.” He lifted their linked hands and smiled. “I kind of want to keep you here more.”

Fjord felt a burst of warmth in his chest, like sunlight, even though outside it remained a perpetual dusk. “You’ve got me.” He smiled.

“I know,” Caduceus said.

“I could get you tea,” Fjord said. “I’ll come back.”

“I know,” Caduceus repeated, but he didn’t let go, and Fjord didn’t either.

\---

When Yasha stepped into the bathroom, Beau had stripped down to her underthings and was leaning over the side of the bath, feeling the water. “It needs another minute.”

“Okay,” Yasha said. She sat down against the opposite wall and drew her knees up to her chest to wait. “So.”

“So,” Beau said.

“You are back,” Yasha said. “That was...quick?” It hadn’t felt quick, not in the long hours that she had been waiting, praying, holding onto Caduceus with everything she had and some things she didn’t. But now that it had happened, she was having trouble making the math work. “I thought it would be longer.”

“Yeah,” Beau said. “We, uh. Didn’t sleep last night.”

“Oh,” Yasha said. Her heart felt heavy and light at the same time, thinking of them pushing on through the darkness. “You must be very tired.”

“The adrenaline hasn’t worn off yet,” Beau admitted. “Caleb slept on the boat, though, so he could teleport us back here.”

“That is good,” Yasha said. “He is with Veth?”

Beau nodded. “I think they’re in the lab.”

That was good. Veth had done an admirable job holding it together, better even than Yasha had. She didn’t need to put up that strong front anymore, now that her preferred confidant had returned. Veth loved them all, trusted them all, she’d made that very clear, but Yasha knew that love and trust wasn’t quite the same quality of the love and trust she had with Caleb.

Yasha wanted that—that partnership, that perfect understanding.

Maybe she could get it. Would get it. Her gaze flicked back to Beau, who was watching her openly.

“Almost ready,” Beau said, dipping her hand into the bath again. She’d mirrored Yasha and sunk down into a sitting position against the side of the tub, one shoulder flung backwards so a hand trailed over the side, checking the changing temperature. “Do you wanna…”

“What?” Yasha blinked. Beau swept her hand down her own body, indicating her state of undress. “Oh. Yes.” She stood up and started taking her clothes off.

“Mind if I get naked?” Beau asked, her tone trying so hard to be casual that it sounded anything but.

“I’d like that very much,” Yasha said without thinking. Beau sputtered. Yasha turned to look at her, and their eyes caught. Deliberately, Beau took off her bra.

Yasha flushed, but then mirrored her, stripping all her clothes off rapidly so she didn’t have time to get anxious. “How’s the water?”

“It’s...hot. Yes.”

“Good,” Yasha said. She suspected the sheer trauma of the past hours had effectively stripped away her self-consciousness, and she made for the hot tub before it could make a reappearance. Beau followed, sliding in the opposite side of the tub with her arms slung back to keep her propped up on the side.

The water did feel nice. She hadn’t realized how tense she was until her muscles hit the hot water and she sighed involuntarily. “Oh, that is nice.”

“That place was so fucking cold,” Beau sighed. “I’m surprised everyone else isn’t doing this.”

“I’m glad they’re not,” Yasha said. “Not that...I just wanted some time alone with you. I missed you.”

“Missed you too,” Beau said. “It felt really weird, not having everyone.”

“It was the right thing to do,” Yasha said. “But it...did not  _ feel _ good.”

“How was it here?” Beau asked. “I mean—with Caduceus and Veth.”

“It was...it was okay,” Yasha said, cautiously. It surprised her to realize that it felt true. “I learned a lot. Veth and Caduceus taught me how to cook.”

“Yeah? Nice,” Beau said.

Yasha nodded. “And also some games that I am very bad at.”

“I saw the Dragonchess board,” Beau said.

“That is much too complicated for me and Caduceus,” Yasha said.

Beau snickered. “I can’t imagine Caduceus playing chess.”

“It is not his...thing.”

“No,” Beau said. She paused for a moment, staring down at the water. “I kind of meant more like—how did it feel?”

“Being here?” Yasha said. “It felt...not great. Not...eh, I was very worried, all the time. But it was also sort of peaceful. It felt…I don’t know.”

“I felt fucking powerless that whole time,” Beau said. “And I was  _ doing _ shit. I can’t imagine what it was like here.”

“I thought it would be worse,” Yasha admitted. “But it was,” she paused, “I was doing something. I thought it wouldn’t feel like anything but actually it did. It did feel like it helped.”

“It did?” Beau asked.

“It felt important,” Yasha said.

“I mean, it definitely was,” Beau began. As she spoke, she reached up and tugged her hair out of its ponytail. The damp strands stuck against the tie and she fumbled with it for a moment, distracting herself from what she was saying. “Ugh, gross, I think there’s dried blood in here.”

“Come here,” Yasha said. Beau looked at her. “Let me wash it for you.”

“Uh,” Beau said, pupils blown wide. “Okay.” She came over. “How do you, uh…”

“Here,” Yasha gently turned her around so Beau’s back was to Yasha’s chest. “Lay back.”

Beau obeyed. Her hair splayed in the water in a darkened, tangled web. Yasha cupped her hands to pour water over it, and then leaned over the side of the tub to retrieve a cup and pour hot water gently over Beau’s scalp, thoroughly drenching her hair. 

“That feels nice,” Beau said, closing her eyes for a moment. “You were saying it felt okay? Being here?”

“Yes,” Yasha said. “I obviously wasn’t...fixing anything. But every time I wanted to run away, I thought about how much worse it would be if he was alone. And that…I don’t know. Sometimes you can’t fix things, so all you can do is make it hurt less. And I think I made it hurt less.”

“That’s...yeah,” Beau said. “I mean, you did. I’m sure you did. Like...Caduceus was lucky to have you.”

“We’re lucky to have him.”

“Yeah,” Beau said. “Shit, that was really close.”

“It was,” Yasha said. “It was...I had a really weird dream last night.”

“About what?” Beau asked. Her eyes opened again and she looked up at Yasha. Yasha began carefully combing her fingers through Beau’s hair, separating the strands gently, working out the snarls.

“About the Wildmother. And about—what it means to live. What it  _ takes _ to live. It reminded me of what Caduceus said to Trent, at that dinner. That love is what makes us. I don’t know if...I don’t know. I want love to make me,” she said. “I want my love to make things. I am tired of destroying them.”

“Some things need to be destroyed,” Beau offered.

“I know that,” Yasha said. “I don’t mind that. I like fighting things. I want to kill Trent. I want to keep getting rid of the things that try to hurt all of you. But I’d like to build some things, too.” She reached for the soap and worked it between her hands to create suds and started rubbing it into Beau’s hair. It smelled like sage.

“Yeah,” Beau said. “That’s—I think that’s a really good goal.” She sighed. “I mean, you did that. Taking care of Caduceus? I know you said you didn’t know how but…he’s still  _ here. _ You took really good care of him. I couldn’t have done that. I don’t know how to take care of things, either.”

“I could teach you,” Yasha offered. “I mean, I’m still learning. But we could learn together.” She pressed a palm to Beau’s hairline to shield her face from water droplets as she poured a cup over her hair.

“Yeah,” Beau said, tipping her head back further into Yasha’s hand. “That sounds great.” She waited until Yasha had finished pouring to crack her eyes open again. “I can do you next. Your hair.”

“I’d like that,” Yasha said, and Beau grinned up at her. “It’s kind of a mess, though.”

“That’s perfect,” Beau said. “Messes are what I’m good at.”

“To more messes,” Yasha said.

“Hopefully the fun kind,” Beau added. “You done?”

Yasha considered Beau’s head tipped back into her hand. She’d gotten the soap back out of her hair and it hung there, dark and smooth. She could have released her then, but—

“No,” she said. “Not yet.”

“Alright,” Beau said. “It feels nice. Take your time.”

“I will,” Yasha said. Beau closed her eyes again, and that made Yasha bold enough to say, “Do you want to have breakfast sometime? It doesn’t have to be breakfast,” she added, when Beau’s eyes snapped open. “But I’m probably the best at breakfast. I make pretty good pancakes now. I don’t know how to do bacon yet but I can learn.”

“Are you offering to make me breakfast?” Beau said.

“Yes,” Yasha said.

“ _ Fuck _ , yes,” Beau said. “Maybe not tomorrow since we’re all going to be tired as fuck. Day after?”

“Day after tomorrow,” Yasha agreed. “It’s a date.”

“It’s a—“ Beau paused. Blinked. The smile that spread across her face was the most beautiful thing Yasha had ever seen. “It’s a date.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you had told me when I started writing this that the only canon-compliant bits would be Caduceus telling Fjord he loves him and Beau and Yasha naked in a bathtub together, I would have laughed in your face.
> 
> If you can, please leave a comment! They mean a lot. 
> 
> If you liked this, check out my other Critical Role fics [here](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrome/pseuds/Chrome/works?fandom_id=5406982). You might particularly like [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27939167) canon-compliant take on Fjord and Cad in Eiselcross.
> 
> I'm [catalists](http://catalists.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr or [@chromecatalists](https://twitter.com/chromecatalists/) on Twitter.


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